


Distraction

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Anal, BDSM, F/M, Flashbacks, Orgasm Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:45:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Idle speculation on a possible reason the President might find a relationship with the Admiral too "distracting." It's crack, of a sort. D/s, a little bondage, and graphic sex ahoy.</p><p>This was intended to be an interstitial piece, but the show took a turn near the end that made the fic impossible to continue without it becoming too angsty. I hated to leave it unfinished...but cancer and BDSM just weren't going to be a sexy combination. So don't expect a whole lot of closure (although I did make an attempt to at least give them a bit of a happy ending). Instead, it's mostly just some setup and then a bunch of kinky PWP. Hey, could be worse!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Distraction

It hadn’t been  _all_  the time. It hadn’t been every time. But it also hadn’t been the first time, for Laura, and she supposed Richard had just sensed it,  _smelled_  it on her somehow, like the wolf he’d been.   
  
She prided herself on her self-sufficiency, on her private nature. She had been single throughout her career, as a teacher and a principal, a district superintendent in the Colonies’ largest district, and then planetary Director of Education for Caprica. And at no time had there been scandal, had there been gossip, had there been a hint of any proclivity that was the least bit… unconventional.   
  
Oh, of course people knew that she was sleeping with Adar, and had been for at least ten years prior to her appointment as Secretary of Education. That hardly mattered, she was still the logical candidate for the job, and she’d been more than skilled enough in that role to more than counteract any suggestion she’d slept her way there. She hadn’t – Adar would have been foolish to appoint anyone else, and he had never been foolish. Other things, but never that.  
  
But the precise nature of their relationship…  _that_  was what might have raised some eyebrows, even in sophisticated Caprica City, especially from those who assumed the liason was all about convenience and ambition. It wasn’t. Or from those who assumed that the dynamic had her at the top, a strong woman carrying that role into the bedroom. She hadn’t.   
  
What bothered her sometimes, though not always, was  _why_. She wasn’t naïve, she knew how she was wired, and clearly Adar had known as well. There had been hints, flirting with possibility, since she worked on his early campaigns. He spotted her in the crowd, favored her, moved her up through the ranks and increased her visibility. It never hurt, he later pointed out with rather cruel cynicism, to have the most efficient worker in the bunch also be the prime eye candy to place behind his shoulder at the photo ops.   
  
Not until after he was the mayor of Caprica City had the flirting taken on a more literal note. Eye contact, fleeting brushes of fingers as documents were passed in meetings, the usual sort of thing… but more, there was an intimacy when he spoke to her. No longer about campaign work, of course; a woman in her position (at the time, the district superintendent in the city of which he was mayor) did not volunteer in political campaigns; she appeared at dinners, at functions. She attended select cocktail parties, and rarely gravitated towards Adar on these occasions because she had her own agenda of mingling to pursue. But if she was next to him, and chance had it that nobody was likely to overhear, it was as if she was still answering phones at campaign headquarters, preparing mailouts, assembling poll results… he would half-glance her way, and state what he wanted, and she would get it or do it without a second thought. A drink, an hors d’ouevre… little things. No name spoken to catch her attention, no request. He said it, she made it happen, just like always. A pattern that was lost on neither of them. A pattern that might have startled most people that knew her, with the exception of a very few men who weren’t likely to say anything.   
  
It was never related to work, not to the work she did for money, at any rate, even though it had started with the campaigning. Richard was a professional, she was a professional, and in that life she was as likely to run things as he was… but she knew all too well that people can lead all sorts of lives, some of them seemingly contradictory, and that Richard was tacitly suggesting they cross a line by sometimes drawing her into that  _other_  dynamic. He just knew, and he knew that she knew…   
  
It was after a legitimate meeting that the inevitable finally happened, that things ran late, that she was the last attendee on her way out the door. He held her back on some pretext, it hardly mattered what, as both of them knew they were only waiting a half-hour or so for safety’s sake, to make sure nobody would return for a forgotten file, to know that the secretaries and assistants had all cleared out for the evening.   
  
There was no seduction. No honeyed words, no demeaning ones either on that particular occasion, just the aloof command she expected, the breathless compliance he knew she would provide. Her knees were somewhat sore the next day from the amount of time she’d spent kneeling in front of him that night, but afterward he had praised her, stroking her hair, and rewarded her further by letting her come, too, when he frakked her hard and fast on his desk.   
  
It hadn’t always been so easy to earn such rewards, of course. It wasn’t an explicit bargain, she wasn’t a slave, but it was clear to both that he owned a certain part of her from the outset: the part that had the orgasms, specifically. He played it superbly, was fond of being completely and professionally distant with her one day, and displaying an almost conventional lover-like affection when next they met. Keeping her guessing, wondering what the tone would be, and it only grew easier when he appointed her to his cabinet – they worked in adjacent buildings, then, and had every excuse in the world to stay late. They were also closer to her place, although she preferred to keep that space to herself and he was practiced enough not to insist.   
  
It had been inevitable because of who she was, because of who Adar was, not convenience but serendipity – that events should bring two such like-minded people into such close proximity that they really couldn’t avoid one another forever. And if Laura sometimes wondered  _why_  she needed this particular extreme in a relationship, when she was so very much in control in almost every other aspect of her life… well, to give Richard credit where it was due, she might have wondered, but she usually didn’t  _care_.   
  
He didn’t overplay it, which was probably why it went on as long as it had. Near the end – what turned out to be the end – things had started to change. It was subtle, but it was there. Laura’s guard was up too firmly, perhaps, because she was more concerned with the cancer (about which Richard did not know) than she was with Richard’s pleasure, and he sensed that she was withholding something. It was he who crossed the line between personal and professional, using her obvious distraction to slip the double-cross with the union past her; she wondered, sometimes, if she would have ended it with him then, had things not gone as they had.   
  
But of course, that no longer mattered. In fact, to say “it no longer mattered” was an understatement of stunning degree. Because Richard had shortly thereafter been blown to smithereens, and she had his job now for the second time since leaving Caprica for good, and she had a new and wholly unexpected set of things to distract her. The cancer, for one thing. Although the prospect that there might be some new Cylon-based cure still lurked out there, coloring her perspective and giving her a hope she wasn’t sure she wanted. Hope was itself a distraction, it led to inevitable “what-if” thinking, which she didn’t have time for.   
  
She also didn’t have time for the distraction that was Adama, who she knew to be very different from Adar in so many fundamental ways. He was not nearly as easy, for one thing. She would have said that he was ethical to the bone, and was no politician… but then there was the lie about Earth, his use of the Cylon’s body to try to trick the terrorists holding Billy and Lee and the others hostage. She would have said he was born to command, but on the other hand he seemed to have a genuinely egalitarian view of leadership, allowing his staff more freedom in achieving their ends than micromanaging Richard would ever have dared. A freedom he could allow them because, she knew, they had such a deep and abiding loyalty to Adama. He might have been lacking something, some key element that those at the top needed – there was a reason he’d never  _really_  been made an admiral during his career – but Laura had to wonder whether lacking that quality was such a bad thing. If Adar and Cain were the standards, then how could Adama be considered an inferior model?  
  
So, while she steadfastly told herself that ethical, egalitarian Adama was plain vanilla, entirely unlikely to be a provider of whatever it was, that strange thing she knew she needed, that dynamic that she hated to call domination or submission because there was more going on than that for her… while she told herself that, she had occasionally caught something in his voice, an edge, a stoniness, and been devastated by the “what-if.” She always had to slam the door shut on that line of thinking, stuff it back as deep into her subconscious as she could, but the perversity of her nature meant that it couldn’t stay there long. She played on the edge, daring him to give her commands, flirting with the part of the dynamic that had nothing to do with sex – but it did, of course it did, and even as she laughed at his gruff orders, at his stony-faced authority, she knew there was a venue in which he could melt her from the inside out if he were so inclined, do things to her that Adar could never have accomplished in a million years.   
  
Even the once-in-a-while speculation that it was proved distracting. She shuddered (figuratively and literally) to think of how distracting it might be if, one day, she were actually to provoke Adama to put the flirting they had done to the test… and her assumptions about his arrow-straight nature proved incorrect. If he ordered her into his rack in much the same way he had once ordered her out of her own. She didn’t know, honestly didn’t know, if she could maintain her dual roles if that happened, if the effort wouldn’t prove the undoing of her. Because, as distinct from the way she had felt about Richard (which involved no illusions about his character), she actually respected Bill, was  _fond_  of him, could see herself  _aching_  to please him if it was what he wanted of her, just because she liked him. Could see herself doing just about anything to earn whatever reward he saw fit to give. Somebody like that could own her  _soul_  if he wanted to. Not because of the sex, she thought practically, but because of the way she would feel afterward… unlike Adar, Bill would probably be superb at aftercare, and that was the part she tried hardest not to think of.   
  
It was moot, of course. She told herself that she knew, in her heart of hearts, Bill was  _not_  inclined that way. She could smell the conventionality on him, just as Adar had been able to smell the kink on her. And although there was the theoretical option of getting involved  _anyway_ , she really didn’t know what that would do for her after all these years. Not much, probably. Which would simply become annoying, a different and very unwelcome sort of distraction. She didn’t really care to dislike Bill at this point, and if that happened she almost surely would. Not just dislike, but resent, even hate, and that was just exhausting to contemplate. The “what-if” was more entertaining, on the whole, and less genuinely distracting than either alternative – the relationship she needed,  _or_  the relationship she thought she was likely to get.   
  
So when she sat in a meeting with Bill, curled on his couch drinking his liquor like a friend, flicked her eyes toward his for that crucial moment longer than necessary, brushed her fingers against his when they passed files back and forth… she wondered  _why_. She seemed to feel compelled to flirt, to tempt, even though he had made his position (and his regret about that position) quite plain. She speculated that might be the reason, actually, that she simply felt free to push the boundaries because she knew he would never take her up on it. Because he was a straight arrow, and had ethics up to his eyebrows, and was bound by conventionality, and…  _reductio ad absurdum_. The argument was as likely to be true as its contradiction, and she would never know. She would be damned, either way. She could only ever let herself indulge in the “what-if,” and even that had to be sharply limited.  
  
Because even thinking about what Bill might do, if he ever took the opportunity, was a distraction she simply could not afford.


	2. Meanwhile, on Galactica

Hurry up and wait. The life of the politician, the life of the soldier, intersected at that place where frantic and vital preparations led into interminable boredom while waiting for the right moment to act. Soldiers at least could admit they were bored, could sit around drinking, playing cards, and complaining about their lot. Politicians, on the other hand, had to continue to smile and nod, to appear well-groomed and unflappable, to behave at all times as though the gnawing, brutal tedium were yet another thing at which to express polite and well-informed fascination.   
  
She was good at it. He watched her handle it with a grace he would have thought impossible, had he not seen the mask occasionally lifted once they were alone. It took consummate control, something Adama was not unfamiliar with himself, but still he admired hers. Most of the time, even when they were alone, she was in control. He had watched her pretend to lose her cool with Baltar, once, as a ploy… and she had been brilliantly believable, but afterwards she had walked into a meeting with him as cool and unruffled as if she had just been at a tea party. It was a little scary, in fact. Not as scary as what he subsequently did to Baltar, of course.   
  
Then there was that one time, when she was prepping for the first debate against the little frakweasel… the giggles. He hadn’t expected that. It had been so adorable, and would have seemed so out of character had he not had a sneaking suspicion that it was the first time he was actually seeing her  _in_  character. So cute, but it worked its way into his subconscious as something else, the tickle of an impulse to do something other than join in on the laughter, to do something less friendly and more… More. To be the control she lacked, in that moment. To take that control and hold it in trust for her, so she wouldn’t have to worry about it for once. Not to do her thinking for her, never that, but… too hard to put into words, easier not to think about it.   
  
Except that he did think about it, and at the strangest times. Like tonight, when he was supposed to be reviewing reports about their dwindling supply of heavy ammunition. The ammo slipped from his mind as smoothly as a sleek lock of auburn hair slipping down off a bare shoulder while the shoulder in question flexed and pulled against a loving restraint, or flinched ever so delicately at the sweet bite of a firm hand applied with a snap to the fullest curve of a hip… He had played games like that with Carolanne at times, when they were first together and still felt fond enough of each other to bother with the give-and-take. She had liked to play, and he considered himself a good sport and game for just about anything – although when it became obvious she was actually using him to act out her actual issues about her actual father, and she got defensive and shrill when he suggested this, his interest in the activity waned quite rapidly. By then they were already married, though, and shortly thereafter she was pregnant with Lee, and the whole thing seemed to have lost its charm, anyway.   
  
A few years later, their whole marriage had lost its charm, fallen by the wayside, and in the intervening years Adama had had plenty of time to think about exactly why that was. There were the simple explanations, of course. The ones that started with, “She turned out to be a mean drunk…” and ended with, “… and she was even meaner when she was sober.” There was, “She’d been cheating on me almost from the start,” and the somewhat self-pitying, “She never really loved me or anyone else.” But the truth was not as simple as any or all of those, because all of those were probably true but they weren’t enough to explain  _his_  failure. Had it happened when he chose her? When they courted, when he proposed? At what point had he  _not_  seen what she was, and what they failed to be together? Why had he let it go so far? He knew he wasn’t perfect, and least of all when it came to his dealings with Carolanne… but she had been imperfect, too, and dishonest with  _herself_  about her imperfections, and that dishonesty had been at the root of the problem. Bill had an inclination to fix things that were broken, and Carolanne had certainly qualified; but he found, to his cost and likely to hers, that you can’t fix a person who doesn’t think she  _is_  broken. You can’t really fix another person at all, he realized much later, only encourage her to do what it took to fix herself… or himself.   
  
The solution? Perhaps to find somebody who was not, in fact, all that broken to begin with, or else somebody who was simply eager for his particular brand of tinkering. Carolanne had just called it being controlling, being manipulative,  _playing games_  (oh, the irony) … but at the start all he had wanted was to care for her, to take responsibility for her happiness, make decisions only so that she wouldn’t have to. Not when it came to finance, or housekeeping, the day-to-day details of the home they were trying to build together; in fact he  _wished_  they had had some mutuality there, that Carolanne had shared some of that responsibility. But in other areas… it had never happened, their intimacy in the bedroom had turned out to be only about sex, which he now knew was probably why the spark had fizzled so quickly. She never gave him the emotional trust he craved, and he had no idea how to ask her for that trust. He had been younger then, of course; but he doubted he would know how to ask, even now… although the wisdom of age had finally taught him that someone like Carolanne was the wrong person to ask for emotional risk-taking, anyway. In the end, their world views – their philosophies about what a person could mean to another person – had just differed too wildly. And so they had parted, and it had been horrible and painful for all those unfortunate enough to be involved. Lee and Zak included, which would always be one of his keenest regrets in life.   
  
Again his thoughts turned to Laura, if for no other reason than the sheer, sharp contrast between Carolanne’s personality and hers. Although Laura certainly played her emotional cards close to the chest, if it came to that… he could only assume that her relationship with Adar had been about  _her_  unwillingness to commit, not Adar’s. By being Adar’s fairly widely-acknowledged mistress, she avoided having to risk a real relationship…  _why?_  She was smarter than Adar,  _better_  than Adar; and it obviously wasn’t a self-esteem issue, Laura liked herself a bit too well if anything, so  _why_? Adar represented some sort of comfort zone for her that Bill just couldn’t quite get a handle on… and wasn’t sure he wanted to.   
  
Laura was capricious, to be sure; he wondered if he would ever really know any of her motivations for doing anything. Calling him in the mornings and  _asking_  him to order her out of bed, what was  _that_  about? Not that he wasn’t perfectly happy, more than happy, to do it. Dear gods, if he thought he could get away with it, he’d cheerfully call her out of the blue and order her ass (in truth neither fat, nor lazy) out of bed every frakking morning (because he would then get to talk about Laura’s ass  _every day_ ). He stopped himself, as always, before the inevitable next step in that line of thinking ( _if you had her in your rack all night you wouldn’t have to call her up in the morning and you wouldn’t have to settle for just talking about her ass_ ). Not a profitable line of reasoning if he wanted to keep his composure while working with the woman. Because ordering her ass (so  _very far_  from fat and lazy) out of bed was just one thought away from ordering her ass (and legs, breasts, lips, hair,  _eyes_ ) into bed, and he had to draw the line somewhere.   
  
It did get harder and harder to draw that line, harder still to toe it when she seemed so bound and determined to tease him across it. Starting on New Caprica, when they could have actually done something about it… but it seemed their long habits of caution, of a certain reserve with one another, couldn’t be brought down all the way in a single night. They were neither of them truly broken, but they were also not innocent of pain; they knew themselves all too well, and they were too keenly aware of just how monumental a shift it would have been to change their relationship in that way. Though it had, at various points in that memorable evening, seemed distinctly possible.   
  
If it seemed possible again now, it was because she had dropped the reserve with him completely once the fleet was back together. She flirted shamelessly, probably because she knew he wouldn’t call her on it… and there were times he wanted nothing more than to call her on it, drag her into his cabin, command her clothes straight off her luscious body, and frak her about eight ways from Picon before she was able to catch her breath. Said interlude to include, but definitely not be limited to, a sound spanking for being the brazen tease she had been over the past few months. He had an inkling she wouldn’t mind that part, somehow. Which, on the one hand, might be considered to defeat the purpose… but on the other hand, might be considered by some to sort of  _be_  the purpose. And then he would state, in no uncertain terms, precisely when he would put up with that sort of behavior from her again and when he wouldn’t. Because a man had needs, yes, but a man needed boundaries, too, and clearly so did Laura.   
  
And in response to all this, she would either slap him down and mock him (bad), accept and meekly follow his rules (not remotely likely, and more than a little bit boring), or comply, but start immediately trying to test the boundaries of what she could get away with (very good, and not boring at all... "Yes sir, right away sir..." and that giggle,  _dear Gods..._ ).  
  
Oh yes… and somewhere in there, there would also be a blow job. And at some point, after getting his point across, he would finally make her scream his name in pleasure until she couldn’t pronounce even that much anymore. It seemed the thing to do.   
  
 _Or,_  he told himself, shaking his head to try to clear it, to try to regain some focus on the munitions report he was still trying to read,  _you could stop fantasizing about spanking and frakking the President and just do your work, Old Man. She has cancer, for frak’s sake, show some damn decency. Frakking pervert._  
  
It was no good tonight, the images wouldn’t leave him alone. Sighing, Adama rose from his desk, refilled his glass, and slumped moodily to the head, which was the only practical place to let this thing spin itself out to its customary conclusion. Bracing one hand against the wall and letting the other occupy itself in the usual manner, he relaxed his shoulders and let himself think about Laura, sprawled naked over his knee, until his most pressing issue finally resolved itself and he was once again able to concentrate on his tedious but necessary report. 


	3. The Telephone Hour

Tory stacked the files in order of priority. Tory returned the pencils to their cup on the President’s desk. Tory lined the notepad up with the documents that needed signatures, neat parallels marching across the dark, polished surface.   
  
And then she got to leave, every night, and Laura was left alone in her makeshift bed to try to ignore all the work still staring her in the face, the brutal facts that all those little pieces of paper represented. The facts, which she must wake up and face all over again, the next morning and the next and the next, until she finally – if the prophecy turned out to be correct – died before ever seeing the final result of all her effort.   
  
And she was the prophet, the dying leader, and she had to be noble and act as though it were simply her destiny, and something she had serenely accepted, and at times it made her want to sink her fingernails into something and rip it to shreds with her bare and bleeding hands and scream, and scream, and  _scream_  until she found some measure of release. And they were  _concerned_ that she took more chamalla than was probably wise? The gods help them all if she were ever deprived of that small means of taking the edge off. Gods help Tory, who believed in them so fiercely, and was young and healthy and able to give herself to a man with no fear of the political repercussions… and help Sam, who was evidently a moth to the flame of strong yet unstable women. Gods help Lee Adama, the self-important little prick. He had changed since their sojourn on New Caprica, and not remotely for the better. Few were the times even before the trial that she hadn’t wanted to smack his face before he even opened his mouth; now it was probably only respect for Bill that kept her from finding a reason to airlock his son’s ass.   
  
 _Oh, and the rule of law, of course. So say we all,_  Laura thought with weary cynicism, ending her impromptu bedtime prayer. She lay back against her pillows, trying to ignore the paperwork as well as the faint difference in the pressure of her breast under her arm, the pressure that was not yet painful but was nevertheless  _there_ , and… different. Impossible to miss. Palpable, one might say. Cottle had certainly said it, meaning it literally and not figuratively. So instead of considering all that, she eyed the handset to the comm link, wondering if the Admiral were in his cabin.   
  
She picked up and asked to be put through almost before she realized what she was doing. A crutch, it was becoming a crutch, but she really didn’t know where else to lean these days and supporting herself alone all the time was just… so  _tiring_.   
  
“Yeah. Adama.” He sounded distracted; she wondered if she should have resisted calling.   
  
“Is it a bad time?”  
  
“Oh. Laura… it’s… no, not a bad time. I was, ah, just going over some… munitions reports.”   
  
She could hear a shuffling of paper in the background, almost too loud, as if he were riffling them deliberately to lend credence to his story.   
  
“That sounds deliriously boring. Maybe they’d put me to sleep, could you read them aloud for a bedtime story, Admiral?” She could hear his soft, rumbling chuckle through the faint static on the ship-to-ship line, and felt a small bit of the day’s tension leave her body as the sound of his humor entered it.   
  
“No way I could stay awake long enough to finish that story, Madame President. Sorry I can’t comply, ma’am.”   
  
Taking a chance, she wiggled a toe ever so slightly over the line that separated them. “It wasn’t a  _presidential_  order, Bill. You could always just…  _make up_  a bedtime story, you know.”  
  
“Just like that, huh?” He still sounded distracted, and she wondered idly what his mind was on, since it clearly wasn’t on the report he had rustled at the comm to sound busy.   
  
“… use your imagination?” Did she dare risk a bit more, perhaps? What would his reaction be? “I’m  _pretty_  sure your imagination could come up with a story that was… entertaining.” She fairly purred the last line into the handset, and was relieved and gratified to hear him chuckle again. Differently, this time, though; she thought she had his attention now, at least, which had really been her main purpose. She liked having Bill’s attention. “Maybe you could even tell me a story about whatever you were  _really_  doing when you were supposed to be reading that report…”  
  
He didn’t chuckle, this time; whatever he did sounded more like a spit-take. “Frak me!” he responded, a bit too loudly for comfort.   
  
Laura couldn’t quite suppress a giggle; whatever had caused his reaction, it was priceless. What  _had_  he been doing, anyway? “Bill, are you okay?” She heard a few more subdued imprecations before he answered.   
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. Here’s a story for you: Once upon a time, there was an Admiral who had only one uniform jacket left besides his dress grays. Fortunately for the Admiral, crew-made rotgut liquor comes out in the wash. The end.”   
  
“Aw,” Laura snickered shamelessly, “The Admiral and his jacket lived happily ever after.”   
  
“After the jacket came back from the laundry.”   
  
“It was an on-again, off-again, relationship?”   
  
“Once upon a time, there was a President with a twisted sense of humor-“   
  
“Naughty,” interjected Laura before she could lose her nerve. “A  _naughty_  sense of humor.”   
  
He seemed to think it over for a moment; she was almost ready to start backpedaling when he resumed, a bit more thoughtfully. “Once upon a time, there was a President with a naughty sense of humor… no, make that a  _very_  naughty sense of humor.”   
  
His voice had gone so low and rough she felt it down to her toes, and Laura was glad for the distance offered by the comm line; if Bill had been able to see the blush currently sweeping over her face, the way she was suddenly breathing a bit too fast, the jig would’ve been up. As it was, she could hardly believe he was, for once, apparently taking her bait. She wasn’t even sure how she felt about it.  
  
“Unfortunately,” he went on, “because she was the President, she always got away with it. Even when it meant the Admiral would have to find something else to wear to work the next day while his jacket was being cleaned. The Admiral and his jacket did  _not_  live happily ever after,” he ended, leaving Laura hanging in the worst way.   
  
“That was a very sad ending,” Laura sighed, realistic but still regretful. Couldn’t blame a girl for trying, or for what had evidently just been wishful thinking on her part.  
  
“Very sad,” Bill agreed. “You should get some rest, Laura. Just ignore the work, close your eyes, and let it go for tonight.”  
  
For one awful moment, Laura felt tears rising in her throat, a lump of longing, resentment, being  _so tired_  of this… but she swallowed it back, of course, and if Bill noticed the catch in her voice when she answered, he was thoughtful enough not to mention it. “I will. You should get some rest, too, Bill.”   
  
“Goodnight, Laura.”  
  
“Goodnight.”   
  
And the call was over. That was always the down side of the call, that at some point it would be over, and she would be just as alone after she’d made it as she was before…   
  
“Laura.”  
  
… well,  _that_  was something new. She pressed the handset back to her ear, thinking about how if he’d spoken a half-second later she’d have already hung up, he wouldn’t have caught her.   
  
“Bill?”   
  
“You do know this line isn’t secure, right?”  
  
“Right…”  
  
“Just checking.” She thought she might have heard a sigh, through the static… but it might have just been more static. “In the morning… I’m going to call you and yell at you to get out of bed again. It seems to work well for you.”   
  
She had a lump in her throat again, a different lump. She named it “Foolish Hope,” before she knocked it back down and answered, very quietly indeed, “Yes,  _sir_.”  
  
A definite sigh. Interesting…   
  
“Good night, Laura.”  
  
“Good night, Bill.”   
  
She didn’t hang up the handset, this time, until she was sure the call had been terminated on his end.   
  
The line wasn’t secure. And neither was she. Neither was anybody, these days. But somehow that reality didn’t seem quite as brutal as it had a few minutes ago. Laura pulled the blanket up to her chin, wiggled down into the covers in her usual effort to get comfortable, and somehow managed  _not_  to think about the files on her desk or the ominous presence brushing the underside of her arm even one more time before falling quite deeply asleep. 


	4. Secure Space

For most of her adult years, Laura Roslin had been angling for space. Physical space, emotional space. A bigger apartment, then a townhouse, the freedom to have her home all to herself. Temporal space, the time to do what she wanted despite the demands of her job, in direct conflict with the psychological space afforded by the financial security that job provided her. It was all a balancing act, and although she was satisfied with the result for the most part, she never kidded herself about the amount of effort it all took. In many ways, Adar had sort of become the embodiment, the symbol of all the types of space she’d been able to secure for herself in her life. 

So curious then, that now she was literally living in space, and she wanted nothing more than  _less_  of it. Coziness, intimacy, the sensation of being enfolded in something warm and heavy… not the smothering that she had once feared, but the soothing weight of another’s presence. The feeling that somebody, somewhere, actually paid attention to what she was thinking, not because she was the President but because she was Laura and they were interested ( _he_  was interested). Dependence. Interdependence. Although all that was unfamiliar to her, she felt her way towards it as if it were the essence of home, and the antidote to homesickness. 

She did not like to think that Bill had become the symbol of all these new inclinations merely by default, or convenience. She wanted to believe that the same fate leading them to Earth was also leading her, inevitably and inescapably, to forge a deeper connection with Adama for some reason that might or might not become clear before the end. Not that she thought such inevitability would absolve her of the responsibility inherent in starting a relationship… she knew, she knew, her responsibility was… it was… the colors…

… the chamalla was messing with the colors, again. When she’d first stepped into the Raptor, the entire interior had been an almost uniform shade of medium gray, only the edges of objects apparent as soft white chalk lines, making it difficult to find her way to her seat. Nothing had any depth; without the color, the objects lost their meaning. Tory, all too aware of her employer’s condition, had taken her arm automatically, treated her mental lapse as a moment of physical weakness (it just as easily could have been, she supposed), made sure she was properly strapped in for the hop to Galactica. But slowly the full spectrum of colors had returned, and then some, and now she was treated to the astonishing array of everything from ultraviolet to infrared, hot orange to darkest scarlet marking the core of each person on the little ship, cool green-to-aquamarine at the portholes and wherever else the hull was thinnest. Space was so  _cold_. 

“If there were a leak, I could find it,” she whispered before she could stop herself. 

“Ma’am?” Tory asked reflexively, knowing it had been nothing important, knowing when Laura had last had “tea” to drink. All part of the job, to know when the President was at the high point of her high. Tory had an extremely wide-ranging job description. 

Laura cleared her throat lightly. “Nothing, just… thinking out loud.” She didn’t look at Tory, who currently appeared to glow orange and yellow along her limbs, with a nimbus of viridian-tinted hair. Laura didn’t want to see her face, shadowed in dark red from the heat of her being. It was hard enough to speak to her when she was the normal colors and not a visual heat-map of herself. 

Soon enough, they had arrived on Galactica, and the transient effects of the bitter medicine’s entry into her system had faded, allowing Laura to find her way easily enough down the now-familiar corridors between the landing bay and the Admiral’s quarters. A dinner meeting, which he had proposed after ordering her lazy ass out of bed that morning (she found it promising, on the whole, that he had dropped the “fat”). And a berth on Galactica for the night, as she had an early morning appointment with Cottle for another diloxin treatment. No use returning to Colonial One, of course, after such a late meeting. It was all about practicality.

Laura wondered if people actually bought all that, or just assumed they were planning something other than an administrative summit but were being polite about it. She found she cared less, now that the cancer had returned. The increased likelihood of fatality seemed to bring a concomitant increase in fatalism. 

It wasn’t just fatalism, though. She saw the cancer as something new this time, as a gift, or as the vehicle for a boon from the gods. She thought she probably  _would_  die, this time around…  _but not just yet_. She knew she would sicken again before she died, have to endure all the debilitating pain and soul-deep exhaustion the diloxin and chamalla were currently helping stave off…  _but not just yet_. The gift the cancer gave her was time, and she had to decide what to do with that time… what actions or omissions would constitute squandering it. She had no intention of squandering it; the gods had granted her this second chance, but instinct told her she would not be getting a third. It was up to her to use that time, that gift more precious than any other, to make things right before she died. The chance to live, to do things one last time or for the first time, the chance to make peace and say goodbye in full knowledge of what it meant… it was too rare to waste, and she so nearly  _had_  wasted it before by not seeing it for what it was. 

Not this time. Something in Bill’s voice had decided her, and she felt calmly determined to begin the last of her life’s choices by stating her intentions here, now, tonight. No more equivocation, no more hints… all of which only half-explained the thrill of anticipation that shivered down Laura’s spine when, after she had spent a singularly unproductive half-hour on Bill’s couch staring at reports and waiting, the hatch swung open and the Admiral stepped in. He was followed immediately by a young marine with a laden dinner tray; while the crew member unloaded the tray at the table, the Admiral offered the President a polite and courtly greeting befitting both of their ranks and stations. 

He had moved off to pour himself a drink by the time the dinner was laid out and they were left alone. He offered her water, well aware that the forthcoming treatment precluded her drinking anything stronger; but Laura noticed Bill served himself a good three fingers’ worth of whatever it was he was drinking these days. Probably the same crew-made liquor he had spilled on himself the previous evening. 

“By the way,” Laura remarked, “your jacket seems to have made a remarkable recovery.”  _Dinner first, then propositions. Dinner first…_

“What? Oh… yeah. It came out.” Bill was at the table, now, uncovering the dinner plates and toying with the utensils. “Sit and eat, while it’s still… almost lukewarm.”

Laura sat, but eyed the depressing offerings with mild revulsion. “Do I  _have_  to?”

Bill wasn’t smiling. “You need to keep your strength up.” 

_Thanks for reminding me. Way to set a mood_. “I really miss real food. Your galley crew comes up with some wonderful alternatives, but… I would  _kill_  for a steak, a real steak.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What way would you want that cooked?” 

“Hmmm. Blood rare.”

“ _Really?_  Huh. I like mine well done.”

Laura contemplated him, moving her fork around her plate in a desultory way. “I almost always used to order my steak medium, actually… I loved it rare, but I was afraid of it not being safe to eat.”

“So why the change, if you had the chance now?” 

She noticed he was eating, but with little enthusiasm; perhaps it was the discussion of steak that made them both all too aware of how unappealing the algae-based ship’s rations were. “Well… have I told you the one good thing about cancer?”

To her astonishment, he answered immediately, with none of the shock she’d anticipated at her question. “You mean… you know you’re going to die, but not right away, so you still have some time to change things before you go? You still have a last chance to get things right?” He was staring at his plate, not at her, and she wasn’t sure whether to feel offended at that or grateful. She was too stunned at his words, the heartfelt sense of them, to be sure whether she was ready to hear them from someone else. “It’s not only true for the person who  _has_  the cancer, you know,” he added.

“You’re… that’s right, that's absolutely right. That’s what I was going to say.”  _Not_  being the one to say it had thrown her off balance, and she knew Bill could hear it in her voice. 

He raised his eyes to hers, then, stern beneath his glasses (she had taken hers off, not wanting to examine the food too closely). “Are you going to eat that food?”

“No.”

“Me either.” He pushed away from the table with a discontented grumble, slapped the covers back on both the plates and shoved them to one side, and then walked over to the couch with his drink in hand. Before he sat, he hitched one of his pants legs up a bit automatically – a middle-aged habit, a middle-aged man, looking unremarkable as he sat on his couch. Except that he was who he was, for all that; he couldn’t help radiating authority, Laura thought, it was his fundamental nature. She could ponder till her death what sort of a man he would have been if none of “this” had happened… but it wouldn’t matter, because it  _had_ , and he was The Admiral now until his death. What  _she_  ultimately was, Laura supposed, remained to be seen… 

“Bill… is the hatch locked?”

Again, he didn’t seem surprised, which in this case was definitely reassuring. “I locked it when Jaffee left,” he confirmed. 

Laura moved to join him on the couch, kicking her shoes off and sitting down on her folded legs a circumspect distance away from Bill. “Have I mentioned? I think it’s amazing that you know all their names. You do, don’t you, all of them, or almost all? And there are so many of them…”

“One thousand, nine hundred three. That’s just the crew, not civilians. We’re low, right now, for combat status. And I  _don’t_  know all of them.” He clearly viewed this as a personal failing.

“I don’t think anybody expects you-“

“ _I_  expect it.”

She looked at him for a moment, head tilted to one side. “Of course  _you_  expect it of yourself, Bill. That’s… who you are. And it’s still admirable.” 

He fingered the rim of his glass, tipping the half-inch of liquid remaining in it this way and that, to catch the light in different ways. 

“You didn’t come here to talk about me memorizing the names of my crew.”

 


	5. Rapture

_“You didn’t come here to talk about me memorizing the names of my crew.”_  
  
  
Laura’s eyes flicked over to Bill and then away; he wasn’t watching her, he was staring into his liquor as if it held answers he wasn’t happy with.   
  
“I came here because you invited me,” she said finally, knowing it wasn’t the response he wanted. It wasn’t actually the response she wanted to give, either; but hers wasn’t exactly an easy topic to drop into a conversation.   
  
“I invited you for dinner. And you didn’t eat,” he accused… rather dishonestly, she thought.   
  
But she found that having the honesty tables turned for her didn’t really make it any easier. Mustering her courage, she ventured, “You didn’t just invite me here for dinner, and we both know it. And I didn’t come here to talk about steak. Or building a cabin, for that matter. So I guess the real questions are, what  _did_  you invite me for, and what  _am_  I here to talk about?” Laura’s mouth quirked up into a strained smile… she was too nervous, and it wasn’t how she intended to feel.   
  
Whatever happened to serenity, to giving herself over to fate? Hell if she knew, at this point. In contemplation of what she  _was_  there to talk about, her mind had suddenly let down its guard and let her see Bill as what he could be, not what she’d let him be up to this point – and it was very distracting, indeed, to see him that way in the flesh rather than just in her mind, as she was accustomed to.  _He_  was distracting; he was so very  _there_. He was sitting in that extremely male way he favored, slumped back against the pillow, knees well apart and braced, his hands cupping his glass at belt level and completing a frame for the exact spot at which Laura was trying so very hard  _not_  to look. Trying, and failing pretty miserably. She thought her ability to compartmentalize this might well be irrevocably broken.   
  
“Suppose you  _tell_  me what you’re here for, then?” he growled.   
  
“Because the game’s more fun if  _you_  tell  _me_ ,” she said in a subversive demi-whisper, not trusting herself to do more than hint and hope. She had her glass halfway to her lips when he intercepted it, removing it from her fingers and placing it on the table next to his.   
  
“No,” he said firmly, turning back to face her and then, as an afterthought, taking off his glasses with a slightly annoyed sigh and laying them, too, on the table. “No, the game can’t start until _you_  tell  _me_.”  
  
“Bill, if there is a game it started back on New Caprica. We just decided not to finish playing it then,” she pointed out, not unreasonably, but in the rhythmic, clipped tones Bill had come to associate with Laura nearing the end of her patience. . “But we’ve been playing  _something_  since then, and I am  _tired_  of it.”  
  
Bill’s mouth twitched in something that only a person who knew him quite well would interpret correctly as a smirk. He stood up and closed the distance between them with a single step; Laura had to crane her neck up a bit to meet his eyes, and could not possibly miss – nor, she realized, did he intend her to miss – what she  _was_  at eye level with. The shift in dynamics was sudden, swift, and she found herself breathless with admiration for him at the dramatic brilliance with which he’d executed it. But then perhaps she was biased. His hands, now framing her face, now gently working through her hair to either side of her head with welcome confidence… equally unexpected, equally and utterly breathtaking.   
  
“I meant the game  _tonight_ ,” he pointed out – redundantly, at this point.  
  
“Oh,  _gods_ ,” was all that Laura could muster, an embarrassingly squeaky and inadequate response. But he seemed pleased with it. He pulled one hand back a little, stroked her jawline in a way that she knew full well was not meant to reassure or calm her.   
  
“You have to tell me what you want, Laura…” His voice was not calming or reassuring her, either; soft as it was, nearly a whisper, it was inflaming her… or maybe that was the scent of wool and warm male about three inches from her nose…   
  
Bill’s hand, the one still nestled in her hair, wrapped itself deeper and gave a slow tug, pulling her attention back to him, to his eyes. She tripped and fell into them before she could help herself; they were too deep to avoid.   
  
“I  _was_. I want… you to tell me what I want,” she admitted, allowing her last shred of defense against potential embarrassment to drift away, the smoke from her sacrificial offering. “Tell me what to do. And what to… what I’m allowed to… to do.”  _Please let that be what he was expecting…_  
  
Naming it explicitly with so little preamble was terrifying, but liberating; she had never given anyone that much of herself deliberately before, never given anyone that much stated power. Richard, and the few before him, had just taken it based on her implications, which she now found was a very different thing. They had taken only as much as they assumed they could, with clearly stated hard limits and no emotional surrender on her part; it was always about power and pain, two things she knew very well. She knew exactly how much physical pain she could tolerate, how much she  _needed_ ; pain was all about endorphins, conditioning, stamina. Pain was a marathon she had run many, many times, her preferred sport. And power was what men like Richard foolishly thought they wielded in such a situation. She had always remained clearly and distinctly  _herself_ , and able to walk away unscathed.   
  
But this… she had no training for this. The situation, Bill himself, had the potential to hurt infinitely more than anything Richard could ever have dreamed of doing. Bill would take as much as she said was his – everything, really, she knew him too well to kid herself that he wouldn’t take an all-or-nothing approach to a relationship – but it wouldn’t be her  _physical_  limits he pushed. Pain would merely be an adjunct, if it figured at all. He could wound her much more deeply than that with just a glance. And she had just opened the door wide and invited him in… handed him her keys.   
  
She could almost hear the gears in Bill’s mind working, see the processing behind his eyes. The pause grew uncomfortably long. When he finally spoke again, quiet, deliberate, she had to swallow a little cry of relief.   
  
“Do you know how to do that thing… where you take your bra off without taking your shirt off?”  
  
Not quite what she’d expected. But interesting. “Um… yeah?”  
  
“Yeah…?” His fingers tightened in her hair, just to the threshold of discomfort but not past it.   
  
“Yes, sir?” She offered, and he released her with another smirk; she shared it out of habit, but quickly lowered her eyes when he gave her a more pointed glance. Etiquette… one forgot it so quickly. “Yes, Admiral?” She asked, just in case.   
  
“ _No_.”   
  
She’d expected that, expected he wouldn’t want to blur the lines by bringing titles into this… and she was relieved, because it would have made things that much harder, and they were already going to be hard enough, that much was clear.   
  
“Bra,” he reminded her curtly, and she complied with a nod, seeing the mingled mirth and lust in his expression as he watched her do the tricky maneuver, reaching behind her back, unhooking her bra through the lavender silk and slipping one strap down a sleeve, over her hand, then pulling the whole thing out of the other hastily-unbuttoned cuff. When she passed the garment to him, Bill raised it to his face and sniffed almost delicately, like a connoisseur; it was intimate, but funny too, and a snicker slipped out before Laura could help herself. She felt too joyful, it all felt too surreal, and the anticipation was agonizing. Which, she knew, was the general idea. She had imagined it… but she hadn’t ever really allowed herself to imagine he would be any good at it, that it might be something more than it needed to be. That it might be  _fun_.  
  
Bill was biting his lip, too, obviously to keep from smiling back at her… but he took the time to smell the bra again before tossing it over his shoulder. “Now undo your top button… mmm. One more.”   
  
The slow slide of arousal sobered Laura more quickly than she thought possible, and she followed his order with shaking hands; he was still standing directly over her, and from this vantage point could see not only cleavage down to her stomach, but also the sudden stiffness of her nipples, poking unhindered at the thin fabric of her blouse. He hadn’t even kissed her yet… she wondered when or if he  _would_.   
  
A moment’s doubt seemed to linger on Bill’s face, despite his clear arousal and hers, and he suddenly crouched down to meet Laura at eye level. “Um… before this gets… out of hand, I just want to make  _sure_  we’re both talking about the same thing, here.”   
  
Laura could feel herself blush from her chest to her forehead. The moment to talk about this had long since passed  _her_  by… “I’m pretty sure we  _are,_  Bill, I mean-“  
  
“Laura, I’m not talking about the sex. I’m talking about the other stuff.”  
  
She raked her eyes slowly down his body and back up again. “But see, Bill… for me, the other stuff  _is_  the sex. More or less. If you’re doing it right…” His eyes glazed over slightly at this idea, to her immense satisfaction. “And I’ll certainly let you know if you aren’t. The word can be, um… how about ‘Blackbird?’ But I seriously doubt I’ll be saying that again this evening. Assuming that we  _are_  still talking about the same thing, here?”  
  
“ _Gods…_ ”   
  
“Didn’t I already say that, earlier?” Laura joked. “I thought you didn’t believe in the gods…  _sir_.” Bill stood up with a soft groan, whether of discomfort or interest Laura couldn’t tell.  
  
“Get over to the table,” he growled, clearing up the question for her. “Pull up your skirt, bend over the table and grab the other side. Time to talk about some things.”  
  
 _Holy shit_.   
  
“Oh. Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” When Laura stood, she got a head rush, and swayed a little; Bill stepped back, making no move to catch her, and if he was feigning his impatience she could no longer tell. Heart pounding in excitement flavored with a tiny taste of anxiety, she walked the width of the cabin back to the table, recent scene of their failed dinner, and leaned over it; her fingers had just gripped the far edge when she heard him approach her.   
  
“Skirt,” he reminded her gruffly, prompting a completely insincere  _’Oops, sorry, sir,’_  before she let go of the table and snaked her hands behind her to inch up her skirt. It took her a moment to steel herself to do it, and then another moment to keep from giggling when the stray thought,  _‘But Bill, this is all so sudden,’_  ambled through her brain. Nevertheless, Laura couldn’t help blushing deliciously at the knowledge that Bill’s eyes were riveted on her. She still suspected him of being a lightweight at this sort of thing, but he was definitely showing promise…   
  
She had just lifted her skirt high enough that the hem flirted with showing the bottom edge of her underwear, when cold air hit her rear unexpectedly; Bill had silently shoved the fine wool all the way up to her waist and yanked her panties down past her hips. No warning, one smooth move. Also without warning, the sharp smack of his hand on her butt, three swift times over the same spot, burning and tingling, clearly meaning business.   
  
“Next time, don’t play around. Just get it done when I tell you to.” He stressed his point with his hand another half-dozen times, until she had started to whimper softly in time with his strokes. “What was that, again?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” she choked out, with a great deal more sincerity than previously.   
  
“Better. I  _like_  you like this, Laura,” he said then, a low rasp next to her ear; she was still gasping at the shock, and hadn’t even noticed he had leaned over her. “I like you with your clothes half-undone, bending over bare-assed and waiting for me, calling me sir and  _meaning_  it for once…” He had kept his hand on her rear, was petting her, and it was a struggle to keep her mind on his words although she suspected they would be important. “I like you like this,  _here_ ,” another smack, and she yelped before she could help it, “in  _my cabin_ ,”  _smack_ , “with the frakking _hatch locked_.” Another two smacks, and she was clutching the edge of the table so hard she would later have cause to wonder why her fingers felt so cramped.   
  
It would be much,  _much_  later.   
  
“Not in the corridors, or the CIC, or on Colonial One, not any other damn place. Have I made myself clear?”  
  
Laura nodded fervently. “Yes you have, sir,” she responded, glad that she was not really called on to say anything more complicated; he was fondling her again, fingers drifting closer and closer to her core, and she felt almost overcome by the conflicting sensations of pain and the anticipation of pleasure.   
  
“Good. Nobody but me sees you flirt anymore, nobody else even gets to have a reason to  _think_  about you that way. Here and  _only_  here.” She was expecting another smack, but Bill threw her off balance again by running his fingers over her exposed folds suddenly, brushing a little of the gathering wetness away and leaving behind an aching sensation of desire. That sensation was only magnified when he brought his hand up to her mouth. “Lick it off,” he instructed, inserting a damp finger between her lips, treating her to a taste of herself. She suckled the digit enthusiastically, lasciviously, giving him a preview of what she knew was probably on the program for some point in the evening… assuming Bill had thought that far ahead, which she was beginning to suspect (with no little delight) he actually  _had_.   
  
She murmured his name without thinking, by accident, while giving his middle finger the head-audition of a lifetime; it took him a second to shift gears, back off from the sweet feel of her tongue and lips. “What did you say?” He pulled his hand away and plied it sharply on her ass again, the dampness on his fingers only adding to the sting.   
  
“I meant,  _sir,_ ” she corrected herself, working her hips against the pain.   
  
“But you didn’t  _say_  ‘sir.’”  _Smack_. He had shifted to the other side, warming her all over again in a new spot. Avoiding bruises, maximizing the sensation because anybody knew that after a few good pops, the first spot grew numb for a few minutes anyway… Laura was rapidly revising what had clearly been an underestimation of Bill’s knowledge base, and she tried to avoid thinking about just how and when he had learned all this. Maybe he was just an extremely talented novice…   
  
“Frak.” Bill was stroking her again, dipping his fingers a bit deeper this time, clearly torn between continuing their game and just proceeding straight to the end. “The underwear need to go. Get ‘em off.”   
  
Laura wasn’t sure why she should feel any more exposed than she already was, sliding the skimpy garment from its current location just above her knees, down to the ground and off her feet; but she did feel that way, even when her skirt fell back into place as she stood and handed the panties to Bill in response to his imperious gesture. Grinning in conquest, he gently pushed her back down to the tabletop with one hand before he disappeared with his prize into his bunk area, where she heard a drawer sliding open and closed. He’d appropriated her panties. She wondered if she would ever get them back. Surely he knew how few pairs she had left…?  
  
“You know I’m going to make you work to get those back,” he said with unseemly happiness, returning to the table; she really didn’t know when she’d ever seen him look so pleased, and it was starting to make her more nervous than his former sternness. A buoyantly happy Bill was a slightly unsettling Bill. “It’s gonna take you awhile, too. Now…” He flipped her skirt up again, but didn’t touch her, which Laura was aroused enough to find maddening. Then he stroked feather-light, not over her sex but over the marks he’d made flanking it. “Nice… but I’ve changed my mind. Take off the rest of your clothes. You’re wearing way too much.” He leaned against the edge of the table, crossing his arms and ankles casually, waiting for her to begin.   
  
 _Exposed._  Laura felt like she was wearing little enough as it was… she hadn’t really thought about it, but for various reasons of practicality she had nearly always kept most of her clothes on with Richard; she could probably count, without resorting to using her toes, the times she’d been completely naked in front of him. And they had hardly ever been in a bedroom… she usually managed to avoid thinking about Adama’s quarters as his bedroom, but there was really no escaping it at the moment. And there would be no escaping it after this, obviously. Another broken compartment.  
  
She tried to still her racing thoughts and just focus on her actions, the slip of silk around the three remaining blouse buttons, then over her shoulders; being silk, it slid to the ground in a slick, silent fall. The shirt had weighed far less heavily on her than Bill’s focused gaze now did. He took a sip of his drink, and it seemed to Laura he did it because he wasn’t sure quite what to do with his hands, with his expression; she needed him to have the plan, but she found it encouraging to think he was a bit nervous, too. Still, she unfastened her skirt and let it fall with a beat of lingering trepidation… naked was naked, there was no turning back from that with any grace.   
  
Not that there was any turning back from  _any_  of this.   
  
Bill seemed to have regained his composure; he sat looking her over thoughtfully, clearly appreciative, obviously trying to decide among his many options. Raising his drink, he brushed the cool surface of the glass against one of Laura’s nipples, encouraging it to stiffen even further. Her hands, hanging at her sides, fisted reflexively, wanting to grab him but fairly certain it wouldn’t be permitted. He caught the motion – he noticed  _everything_ , how long had he been so in tune to her every tiniest movement? – and tapped the back of her hand thoughtfully with his own.   
  
“Laura…relax.”  
  
She couldn’t help laughing aloud at that, breaking the frame momentarily; he didn’t seem to mind, he smiled quite disarmingly at her in fact. And then leaned in and kissed her, a sweet first-date kiss that went on forever. He coaxed her hands up around his neck, slid his own around her waist, and explored her mouth as thoroughly and patiently as if she were not standing there naked, bottom already bearing his handprints in a flower of blush-pink. As if she were not already so keyed up she was trembling, despite his admonition to relax.   
  
She tried to ground herself in small details: the scratch of uniform wool against her stomach, the too-hard flooring under her bare feet, the feeling that a bruise might be starting where her hipbone had fetched up against the table edge. But there were too many other details in her way… not just the way he opened her lips with his, but how his uniform gently chafed not only her stomach but her breasts, the unexpected gentleness of his touch at the small of her back, the way his hands felt as though they were designed to fit the curve there. Leading her to wonder, inevitably, in what other ways she and Bill might feel made to fit one another…  
  
That line of reasoning led her to risk leaning in a bit more to the embrace, trying to get closer to the hard length that marred the crisp lines of Bill’s uniform. “Nope,” he said instantly, shifting her away and placing her hands firmly on the edge of the table behind her. “None of that. No stealth groping.”   
  
“Is that a rule, sir?” Laura asked, a bit rebelliously.   
  
“It is until I say different. Keep your hands there, don’t move…” If he hadn’t specified it, she would have moved then, in response to the stroke of his hands from her arms to her chest, skimming over her nipples, stopping to pinch them almost to the point of pain. By the time he lowered his lips to the tortured flesh, she couldn’t suppress a shudder of need; not could she stop herself from whimpering when he murmured to her to keep still, reminded her he was keeping track…  
  
He was working his way lower, and it was hard for Laura to know what was worse, the excruciating effort it was taking to keep from moving, or the desperate need to do as he asked so he would continue. Tongue in her navel, tickling on purpose to try her determination. Fingers parting her thighs just enough to admit his hand between them, stopping her when she would have spread her legs further. Just his fingers, just a touch here, a stroke there… and then finally, finally, his lips, his tongue, one calculating flutter where it would have the most effect…  
  
“Don’t do it, Laura,” he warned softly, looking up just long enough to glare at her when she groaned. “You’ll come when I say you can…” Bracing his hands against her thighs, he leaned back in for one final assault before getting to his feet once more.   
  
She didn’t do it, but it was close, very close. Laura’s breath came in little gasps, even when he moved away, and her legs were barely holding her up. It was hardly out of consideration, however, that Bill led her next to the couch, pushing down on her shoulders and sitting her in front of him, much as they had been to begin with. Except that now she was naked, and he was unzipping his trousers and freeing his erection with a somewhat relieved groan and sigh.   
  
“Suck it,” he commanded, “and if you do a really, really good job and then ask  _very_  nicely, maybe I’ll finish inside you and let you come, too.”  
  
There was a clearly smug undertone to Laura’s, “Yes, sir,” this time – she had absolutely no doubt of her ability to do a really, really good job at this. And indeed, within just a few minutes, the combined actions of her tongue, lips and hands had Bill moaning and bucking his hips gently into her mouth.   
  
“Laura… so good. Frak, that’s good,” he whispered. “Always wanted to watch you do that…”  
  
“Really?” She murmured back, shifting her attention smoothly from cock to testicles to free her mouth for talking. “Anything else you’ve always wanted?”   
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Admirable control the man had, she had to admit, especially considering how long it had most likely been since he had felt a tongue anywhere near where hers was at the moment. “ _Sir_. Anything else you’ve always wanted me to do, sir…?”  
  
“That’s not asking nicely. And I’m sensing a lack of focus, Laura.” Lightning-quick, he pulled away just long enough to haul her to her feet and turn her around, hoisting her by her waist to kneel where she’d just been sitting, unbalancing her with a well-timed but careful push so she was forced to catch herself on the back of the sofa. Staring at a short row of books that were flanked by an antique sword on a stand and a small bronzed statue of a lion… she had just time to notice that the frame to his largest oil painting had a dent in the wood near the bottom right corner, she’d never seen it before… when Bill slipped a finger inside her and her eyes slammed shut, all her senses funneling down into just that one. Testing, he was testing her. She braced herself on the couch and tried to breathe.  
  
He ran his other hand, broad and warm, up and down her back in strokes that might have soothed but didn’t, in counterpoint to the movements of that one finger inside her, the others brushing too lightly against her labia, her clit, to do more than torment.  _Gods,_ she wanted him, but when she said so he laughed at her.   
  
“You can do better than that,” he taunted. “I think you need more motivation…” So soft his voice had become, softer all the time, but it was doing things to her his yelling never had. It was as soft as his hand was hard against her upper thighs, inflaming still more nerve endings with calculated sweeps of forehand and backhand… while his other hand never stopped its slow, sensual torture inside her.   
  
Laura was trying to tune out the pleasure, shaking and crying out with the effort not to come, but even the stinging rhythm Bill set was causing her to throb and ache with need now, the need to feel  _more_ , to feel him inside her. She must have said something – she may even have asked nicely, but if so she certainly had no recollection of it afterwards – because from one moment to the next he had he shifted his hands to her hips, replaced his fingers with his cock, and sheathed himself inside her with a fervor that made a lie of his earlier show of control. Not that Laura noticed. She was too far gone to stop; his first thrust into her had shattered her discipline, flared through her body and mind with a shock of pure ecstasy that seemed to have no beginning, no end. She couldn’t hear his hoarse cries, blending so sweetly with her own. She couldn’t feel where his body ended and hers began, and it didn’t matter, because she had no idea who she was for that brief, endless pause in their lives. Sensation became everything to her, and to Bill as fortune would have it: their small, private rapture, undergone in secrecy behind the locked hatch, with crew members passing by in the corridor, and the officers and enlisted all unaware as they stood their duty at their stations all over the most important vessel in the fleet, in a tiny section of relatively crowded space, in a universe that was still so large that human and Cylon were equally insignificant in a scheme of things too grand for mere beings of flesh or metal ever to divine. 


	6. Intermezzo

She couldn’t remember afterwards exactly when Bill had taken his clothes off, or how he had ended up on the couch beneath her. She only knew she had found yet another fit between them, her head on his shoulder, his arms encircling her, as she curled herself over his chest and entwined her legs with his. A fleeting aftershock hummed through her lower body, and Bill tightened his grip when she curled her toes and moaned softly into his neck. 

“You okay?” He lowered the hand that had been at her waist, stroked her hip instead, inadvertently prolonging the shiver of sensation. 

She nodded, still feeling too drained to speak. Speaking might break the spell, there was also that to consider… 

“You’re still worked up,” he finally deduced, and Laura nodded again. She felt shy now, a bit, although she couldn’t account for it. What could she possibly have left to hide, here? The subtle motions of her legs, wrapped around one of his, brought her pelvis into accidental contact with his thigh; unable to resist, she squeezed closer, seeking more pressure, although even she couldn’t believe she could actually still want  _more_  at this point.

Bill chuckled and twisted away, pulling his leg from between hers and using it to pin her limbs firmly to the couch with the advantage of superior weight. “You’ve had enough for now,” he said firmly – still so softly, velvet over iron. His move had dumped her on her side and he rolled to face her, lifting one hand and weaving his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. The tug was familiar, now; she met his eyes at the precise moment she realized he’d already conditioned her to do just that. “And next time you  _will_  wait until I tell you. Don’t think you’re getting away with that again.”

“Understood, sir. I couldn’t help it, you just made the spaceship  _move_.” She grinned unrepentantly, happily contemplating the consequences he might dream up. Later on, if they had a later on, there might come a time when she dreaded such consequences… but there was a sense in which she looked forward to that, too. 

“Such a smartass. You’re gonna need a  _lot_  of training.” He didn’t seem to mind the prospect, though. He had loosened his grip on her hair and started to caress her neck, although the muscles there and in her shoulders were, he found, more relaxed at the moment than he’d ever known them to be. Curious, he urged her to roll over, and spent a few minutes examining her backside – much more thoroughly than was necessary – to make sure he had left no bruises. Other than a small love bite on her shoulder, the fair skin was unmarred, with no telltale marks to tip Cottle off. 

“Even if he knew, do you really think he’d care?” Laura asked, mumbling into her folded arms. She was growing drowsy, lying on her stomach with Bill now running his hands so carefully from her shoulders to her knees and back again… the same hands that had inflicted such forceful and deliberate swats not half an hour ago, now so gentle and tender that she had to wonder at the range Bill demonstrated. Was one extreme more real than the other, or could he really be both?

“ _I’d_  care,” he said, a bit more roughly than she expected. “Remember? First rule, Laura. This stays here. Nobody but me gets to think of you like that.” 

She did indeed remember, her body shuddered slightly with the memory of learning that lesson, and with the knowledge that Bill was evidently planning to make the “game” open-ended. Which suited her quite well, of course. As did the feel of his lips, brushing along her spine, a line of kisses broken only by an occasional damp flick of tongue as he tasted her. 

“Second rule, tell me what it was,” he murmured, and she had a moment’s panic when she couldn’t remember. 

”Um… no stealth groping, sir?”

“Good girl. What else?”

Rules were fun, she liked them; knowing them well made them easier to bend later on, easier to break if she wanted to… though she was beginning to suspect Bill’s view of this might differ dramatically from her own. “If you put me somewhere, I stay there until you say I can move… oh, right there. Right under my shoulder blades…”

Bill was kneeling over her back and massaging her now, another thing she never dreamed he’d be good at. “This would work better with some oil…”

“That is so  _often_  true.”

He snickered at that. “You’re relaxed now, anyway. You’ve never been this relaxed.” 

“You  _told_  me to relax, sir,” she said pertly. “Just following orders.” 

“Yeah… when it suits you. We need to work on that.” 

Laura’s brain gave a little lurch, a sudden moment of unwanted perspective on how quickly their relationship had made such a fundamental leap. She knew why, there was simply no time left for flirting, courting, working up to things gradually and cajoling the press into thinking it had been their idea… but things were going to be  _so_  different now…

Bill’s fingers felt the lines of tension trying to work their way back into Laura’s shoulders, and he frowned, pausing in his work. “Your brain just started working again. Quit it. Quit thinking.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle wryly at that. “Quit breathing, you say?”

“Laura… quit thinking things have changed. Nothing is gonna change.”  _How the frak did he keep doing that? Was she stating all her thoughts aloud with realizing it, or were they printed on her back, **what?**_. “You’re gonna keep chipping away at the rules because you think you know better, and I’m gonna keep calling you on it when you go too far.” He drew his hands down her back, slowly, following the curve of her waist and hips with loving attention to detail before sliding down to cup her ass firmly, possessively. “Only now, we get to do it naked, and I get to feel like you’re actually paying attention to me.” 

There it was, the giggle he’d been looking for, bubbling to the surface like magic and transforming her. “It stays here, though, Bill, right? Because the Quorum, I don’t know…”

“’Excuse me, I’m calling a brief recess. The President needs to be taught a lesson. Won’t take long.’”

“ _Stop!_ ”

“’She’s a rotten sex slave, though. Sassy as hell. I only let her get away with it because she has a great ass and she sucks my dick like a pro’ – ow!”

Laura had twisted around, laughing so hard she was almost crying, and elbowed Bill in the chest; before she could do any more damage, he flattened himself out on top of her back, letting his weight do the work of pinning her. She slapped ineffectually at his side, but couldn’t connect with any force. “You are a bad, bad man!”

He just grinned, nuzzling behind her ear and catching the lobe in his teeth for a brief nip and suckle. “I’m a bad, bad man… what?” He could feel the hitch in her breathing, the subtle change in her laughter. 

“You’re a bad, bad man,  _sir_. Frak. I’m going to regret saying that, aren’t I?” She didn’t sound tremendously regretful, however. 

“Depends. People regret different things. There’s one more rule you need to tell me.” 

“There is?”

“You broke it.”

“Oh,  _that_.”

“ _That_. Tell me.” If he’d thought she were being coy, he would’ve found her blushing and hesitation annoying; as it was – she was naked under him, still wet and not quite calmed down yet from frakking him – he felt a rush of something, pride or maleness or something, that he could get her to say this out loud even though it made her blush. Because she  _would_  say it, even though she clearly didn’t want to. 

“I don’t get to come until you say I can,” she finally said, all in a rush, and then bit her bottom lip. “Sir.” She added it only after he’d opened his mouth to remark on the lapse. 

“ _Unless_. Not ‘until.’”

She thought about the difference in wording for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “ _Unless_  you say I can, sir.” 

He hesitated for a few seconds before daring his next guideline, not sure how she would receive it. “I want that one to leave the cabin with you.”

She didn’t say ‘no’ immediately, which he found encouraging; neither, however, did she say ‘yes’ right away, and he found he valued her even more for recognizing this as something that required some careful consideration. 

They both knew it would be almost purely symbolic; she rarely got the opportunity and privacy to do anything along those lines, anyway, and when she did she was usually too tired. He knew the circumstance only too well himself, although he did at least have an actual cabin, with a hatch that locked. What mattered was the  _idea_ , of course. 

“Well. Would… sometimes, could, um… would you let –“ 

“ – this isn’t a negotiation, Laura,” he reminded her, the steely-soft tone making a reappearance. “If you say yes, I say when or  _if_ , even once you go out that hatch. That’s it. I’m not adding conditions to it.” It was a symbol; he didn’t want to compromise a symbol. “I’m also not going to hold it against you if you say no.”

If she suspected that last part wasn’t exactly true, she was wise enough not to say so out loud. But she knew all about symbols, too, and wasn’t willing to establish one lightly. She knew how he would react if, later, she violated it. “I need time to think about it.”

“Fair enough.” 

It felt too good, stretched out on top of her like this, taking only the minimum weight he had to on his elbows to allow her to breathe. He finally had a complete handle on the Roslin situation, and all it had taken was getting her naked, spanking her until his hand stung, frakking her senseless, and pinning her limp and sated body down with his own. Fortunately she’d also followed orders – for the most part – to the benefit of them both. So easy. Few things in his life had  _ever_  been this easy; he should’ve done this years ago. Bill felt his interest stirring again, and looked for the clock to check the time. No glasses on…  _frak_. 

“What time is it?”

She squinted at her wrist, holding the watch close up, and then farther away. “I don’t have my glasses on.”

Sighing, Bill shifted his weight, grabbed her wrist and held it as far away from him as he could. “It’s only twenty-one thirty.” He sat up and then stood, pulling her with him. “We’re shifting our flag. Get your ass in my rack, now.  _Move it_ ,” he added, nearly yelling, when she just grinned up at him and briefly brought her fingers to his lips. 

“Of course, sir,” she responded in a cheeky murmur, raising an eyebrow at him. 

“ _Damn,_  you don’t learn.”

“I don’t,” she admitted, strolling not to the bunk, but to the head. “I really don’t. I probably need some help with that.” 

Not until Laura had shut herself in, cleaned herself off, and was about to open the hatch to go back out did the full impact of what they had just done and what he had asked of her sink in. She had to stop with her hand on the handle, lean her forehead against the cool metal of the hatch, to keep from drowning in the wave of panic that accompanied her realization: worse than her worst fear, he was  _good_  at this… so good, she wasn’t sure how to stop herself from just giving in because it felt  _so_  right. To trust him with herself, to let everything else go, to not have to think. But she couldn’t be that person all the time, she was the President, she had responsibilities… Bill had responsibilities. Maybe he’d been right, to begin with, and she should have stayed away, because she didn’t know if she had the strength to give this up now she’d started, or the concentration to be one person at work and another… when he said she could be. Richard had been, at heart, an egotistical bully, which made him very simple; he wanted to frak her because she was pretty and worked for him, and he needed to think he was in charge during sex, but he actually didn’t much care what she thought about it – ever – or what she did when she wasn’t around him... as long as she was discreet. Out of sight was out of mind for him, which turned out to be very convenient for her, too. But this…  _I almost said yes, I still **want**  to tell him yes to that. Have I gone completely insane? What the  **hell**  have I gotten myself into?_

The soft knock by her ear startled her; she jumped away from the hatch with a gasp, then chided herself. It was just Bill, obviously, checking on her because she’d been in here awhile. 

Except that he wasn’t “just Bill” anymore ( _Unless you say I can, sir_ ), and she had no idea what she was going to say to him once she opened that hatch. 

[Previou](http://survivalinstinct.net/viewstory.php?sid=775&chapter=5)


	7. The Taste of Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Instead of kinky sex this chapter ended up having cookies.

Bill’s position was a mirror of Laura’s, leaning on the hatch, hand on handle, frantic about what came next. But Bill’s case, he had an inkling of what was going on, he suspected she had panicked, and his concern was that she would try to make some sort of decision in there before she came out and talked to him about it. He couldn’t face that possibility, couldn’t go back now. He could feel the handle move from the weight her hand on it, knew she was right there on the other side… what was keeping her from opening the hatch?  
  
“Laura?” He called softly, knocking again.   
  
“Um…”  
  
He could hear it in her voice, and wondered if it was too late to head things off at the pass. “Time to come out.” Gentle but firm.  _Please come out, please don’t let me have frakked this up._  
  
How could he know this part better than she did? After the endorphins came the crash, and if things went badly, the tantrum, the steep spiral downward. It was the same with fighter jocks after an engagement, with boxers after a match, the same dynamic any time emotions and hormones ran artificially high… Handle it well, and it could lead to a state of mind for the fighter that was almost unreal, both during and after the… match. The kind of calm that was only possible after a storm. That was the point, that was the draw, what pulled people back to that edge time and again. Handle it badly, and… thoughts of Carolanne, of Zack, of Starbuck ran through his mind in rapid succession. It had been  _his_  job to handle it, and if he had somehow once again gotten it wrong…   
  
“I’m just… I need… a minute.”   
  
 _Not this time_. “Laura.”   
  
He had no idea what else to say… but she opened the hatch, to his very great relief. She looked like she was trying  _not_  to look terrified, however. He took her hand, pulled her firmly along in his wake. “Come on. Come to bed.”   
  
“I thought it was a rack or a bunk,” she said suspiciously.   
  
Bill smiled at her over his shoulder. “Not when I’m telling you to come to bed.”   
  
“True, that just wouldn’t flow quite as trippingly off the tongue, would it?”   
  
 _This_ , he recognized; she was talking too much, too fast, using words to push him away, but he was used to working through that. “It would not. Sit.” He yanked the coverlet and sheet back, indicating a spot roughly in the middle of the bunk; she sat, for lack of any other good options, and he draped the bedclothes neatly back around her shoulders, cocooning her in the drab fabric. Drab, although he noticed, as he had the one time he’d seen her here before, that the color set off the green in her eyes, lending them even more brilliance than usual.   
  
He pulled a corner of the sheet over his own lap, trying to focus on one issue at a time. “You started thinking again in there, didn’t you?”  
  
“I did say I needed time to think,” she reminded him, tugging the covers a little defensively around herself.   
  
“I don’t mean about  _that_ ,” he said a bit harshly, gritting his teeth in frustration when he saw the tension snap back into her. Resistance, which had been the opposite of his intention. He forced himself to back off, to smooth out his tone. “That isn’t important right now. What’s important is that you look like you’re one step away from a panic attack, and I think it’s understandable that I might feel concerned. Given the timing.”  
  
A flash, a microcosm of all that could be unpleasant about Laura’s personality zipped across her face before she could control it. “Your concern is duly noted. I just have a lot on my mind at the moment, and I’m sure you do, too.”   
  
He smiled wryly, and said nothing – he could not trust himself to respond in any productive way. What he wanted most to do, he knew would be the single worst thing to do in that moment… to pin her down again, with his body, with his reasoning.   
Instead he got up to retrieve her water glass, and then pressed it into her hands and encouraged her to drink.   
  
“Will you talk to me about it?” He finally asked, after propping a pillow against the head of the bunk and leaning back against it, one leg still trailing down off the edge of the mattress. “Might help, you never know.”   
  
His words, his voice were mild; his eyes, something in the set of his jaw still commanded compliance, and he saw it in the way Laura’s eyes met his, guarded and wary. And so frightened, he didn’t know if he’d ever seen her looking quite that way, not even facing death. “You know. It’s… I know nothing is ever what we expect, Bill. I’ve been around, I’m know you’ve been around, our eyes were open from the start. It’s just… this wasn’t what I expected. And please,  _please_  don’t take that the wrong way, it was wonderful. It was  _wonderful_ ,” she repeated in a whisper, eyes blinking widely as if she still couldn’t believe that aspect of things. She sounded almost like she was trying to find a reason to blame him for something, but simply couldn’t, and was puzzled by that. He just wasn’t sure what she was keen to blame him  _for_ …  
  
He was taking it in, frowning as he tended to do when thinking about anything too hard, and he waited long enough to respond that she finally looked away from him, giving an infinitesimal shrug. She would probably never guess at the reserve of control it took him to keep from just patting the bed next to him, coaxing her up to his side, wrapping his arms around her… but she had been the one to pull away in the first place. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that if he pulled her back now, he would always be the one pulling her back, instead of her seeking him out of her own accord, and he didn’t think that was what either of them was really looking for. He didn’t know why it mattered to him, in the scant time they probably had left… but it did.   
  
“You didn’t come here tonight because you wanted dinner, Laura. You didn’t come to talk about that night on New Caprica. Or steak. You came here because you needed something. What was it you needed?”  
  
Very few people could have caught the flicker of hesitation, the blink of an eye it took Laura to stuff her honest answer down and procure one she liked better; but Bill was one of those few. “Well,” she said slyly, “I’m surprised to hear you ask. I thought I had communicated my…  _needs_ … pretty clearly, Bill.”  
  
He was already shaking his head. “No, you’re still talking about the sex and you know that isn’t what I’m talking about. You  _wanted_  that, Laura. But you’ve wanted that for a long time, we both have and we both know that. No, you  _needed_  something tonight. And you came  _here_  to get it. And my question is, what do you need that you thought I was the one to give you?”  
  
It was her turn to pause too long, and when she finally answered it was in a way he had never expected.   
  
“You figured out about… Adar. Right? A long time ago. I mean we weren’t exactly hiding it.”  
  
Possibly the very lowest on the list of topics he cared to discuss right now, the ex-boyfriend ex-president… “Um… yeah. I had figured that out, yeah.”  
  
“It was… a long time. Over ten years, we’d been together. Do you know why I was with Richard so long, Bill?”  
  
Adama tried to gauge the reception that his various answers might get, but decided that bluntness would probably serve him well in the absence of any better option. “No commitment?”  
  
“Hmmm… well, that was certainly part of it, I won’t lie to you. I liked the freedom of that. But what I really liked – and I know this isn’t very appealing – was that it was so  _easy_. I could lose myself in it, and we knew each other so well after awhile… but really, it was just the knowledge that I could accomplish so much with a minimum of effort, because there were these limited parameters, and I knew those like the back of my hand, and knew exactly what to do. It was a game, and I’m sure I got played every bit as much as I played Richard. Well, I  _know_  I did, although largely because in the end, he cheated. He took it outside the playing field. But Richard’s idea of power meant that he always thought he won. Always. Which amused me, because I wasn’t playing to win or lose in the first place. Which meant that, in a way… I always won.” She sighed, rubbing the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I respected him, I did, I don’t mean for this to sound like I was laughing at him. It’s just that after awhile… I don’t know, it was so easy, and all the other possibilities just seemed like such a pain in the ass by comparison.”  
  
“Hmm… so. Easy, uncomplicated sex.”  
  
“Right…”  
  
“With your boss, the President of the Twelve Colonies. Who was married at the time.”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“And he ordered you around and spanked you. And… tied you up, or whatever.”  
  
“Obviously. Wouldn’t you?”  
  
He gave a little nod of concession; he had to admit, he would indeed, as she knew only too well. “So… you still haven’t answered my question.”  
  
“I’m well aware of that, Admiral Adama.”  
  
There was something, a little gleam back in her eye, a glimmer of hope that all might yet be well. He didn’t ask again, just tilted his head to one side and looked at her, which he was quite happy to do in any case; even swathed in a blanket, Laura was an appealing sight, sitting naked in his bed. Concealed, but still naked; he thought about how quickly he could peel aside those layers and reveal her again, and was glad for the blanket covering his lap, covering the all-too-obvious sign of his train of thought.   
  
“So,” he prompted gently, when he thought he’d given her sufficient time to think, “is that still what you need?”  
  
“If that were what I needed,” she replied much more quickly than he expected, “I wouldn’t have come here to get it.”   
  
“So is the problem that you don’t really know how to say what you need, or that you know how but you’re too embarrassed, or… help me out, here, Laura.” He didn’t want to sound irritated, didn’t want to feel irritated, but he could see her on the edge and just wanted so badly to give her that one  _push_. And he would… but not until he could see that she knew, in her heart of hearts, that the parachute would open for her when she needed it to.   
  
“It’s selfish. And I’m afraid if I tell you, you’ll think less of me.”  
  
Guilt? The  _last_  thing he’d expected. But at least it was honest. “Tell me anyway. Maybe it won’t sound so bad out loud.”  
  
She closed her eyes again, breathed in and out slowly, carefully. “I need… a way to just… not tune everything out, it’s more like, oh… changing the channel. To some very different channel where none of this is happening, because if I can’t get away from it, Bill, I don’t – I know, we  _all_  feel that way, it’s just – I don’t know if I can hold up under the pressure any more without some kind of... And I have to, I've made my choice, I have to do my job and be all the things the fleet needs me to be, and I  _want_  to do what I can with the time I have left. But I can’t ever get away from it, it’s where I live and eat, and work, and sleep, I even dream about it, even more so with the chamalla now. I try to push it away, Cottle says ‘read a book or something, work out, take your mind off things,’ and I  _do_  all that, but-“ he could see that she was tearing up now, but trying not to with an effort that was almost as painful to watch as it must have been to make. Bill leaned forward just far enough to touch his fingers to her knee, or to where her knee seemed to be under the blanket; she clasped her fingers around his too tightly, pouring frustration into her grip.   
  
“I’ve never been good at switching it off myself, Bill. I want to, but I can’t. And up here I just can’t find anything, nothing  _works_ , and it’s too… it’s too-“  
  
“Shhh… easy.” He had scooted up beside her almost without realizing it, and wrapped his arms around her tightly, sitting up on his knees just enough to tuck her head under his chin so she was pressed firmly to his chest. This time there was tension, but he expected it, knew what to do with it. “I get it, I get it. I got you. Shhh…”   
  
She wasn’t crying, not really – yet another thing she couldn’t allow herself the freedom to do – but he held her as if she were, letting her burrow into his chest until her body started to ease a little. “I can’t ask you to be responsible for taking my mind off things, when you have enough pressure of your own to deal with, Bill.”   
  
“You sure as hell better not ask anybody  _else_  to be responsible.”  
  
“Bill-“  
  
“I would kill him with my bare hands.” He said it calmly, conversationally, and it was the absolute truth, which she well knew. Those were the hands she trusted, the ones that could beat or throttle a man to death or siphon the tension from her body with a single touch, depending on his mood and need.   
  
“I didn’t  _want_  to ask anybody else,” she pointed out, for the safety of all the males of her dwindling race. “But maybe this should just be a… a one-time thing.” When he didn’t answer, she craned her neck to look up at him; he didn’t seem to be paying attention, his expression was oddly distant.   
  
“I think they’re still good,” he muttered, and nudged her off his torso so he could get up.   
  
“What are still good?”  
  
“You’ll see…” He was opening one of the little compartments tucked so neatly behind the other furniture in his cabin, this one above the little shelf where the tumblers and decanter usually stood; it was, she realized, a small refrigerator or freezer; the sealed container he took from it was hoary with condensed frost, which he brushed off before opening it back at the bedside. He had seated himself on the edge of the bunk, placing the container next to him, and Laura sat up to watch the proceedings.   
  
The second he had peeled back the plastic lid, she recognized the package it contained. How many of her childhood lunches had contained that brand of cookie? How many times had she snuck them from the pantry? How many cram sessions in college had been fueled by that particular combination of sugar, chocolate, gingery spices, and waxy cream…   
  
“Where did you get those?” she whispered. She wanted one. She wanted one more than any food she’d ever craved in all her life. And Bill was taking one cookie from the crinkly plastic sleeve, passing it to her with something like reverence.  
  
“Black market, about a year before New Caprica,” he explained. “Saul actually got them for me, it was my birthday. Go ahead, it’s okay. They’ve been in the freezer the whole time. They’re still okay.”   
  
Not quite believing it – she had traced the familiar pattern on the top of the cookie with her finger while he spoke, and almost cried realizing that the factory that made it was now lost forever to them – Laura brought the sweet to her mouth and took a tiny nibble off the edge, just breaking off enough with her teeth to give a real taste.   
  
The cookie was a bit stale, of course, and tasted of its time in the freezer, and… it was heaven, the best thing she had ever tasted. “It’s home,” she bumbled, trying to rationalize away the sudden rush of tears she couldn’t suppress. “Tastes like home.”   
  
He didn’t say anything, just nodded and extracted another cookie from the package for himself. Laura ventured another nibble, catching one of the veins of cream filling, which melted away into her mouth and prompted another onslaught of little, gulping sobs. She had her fingers over her lips, trying to keep the taste in, trying to keep the crying in; Bill was being much calmer, she noted, about eating his cookie. Well, of course, he could eat them any time he wanted. It was why he had them. Although she noticed there were still over a dozen left, one entire sleeve plus a few still remaining in the opened sleeve. She did the math, thought how rarely he must indulge in this. Which made sense, as there would be no more of these cookies once this package was gone.   
  
“Home cookies,” she said softly. “You shared your home cookies with me.”  
  
“Everybody needs a home cookie now and then,” he said, a gentle smile curving his lips as he carefully replaced the wrappers in their outer packaging.   
  
“I don’t have any home cookies.” Laura replied sadly.   
  
Bill had resealed the plastic container around his treasure, and turned to look at Laura from the freezer as he closed it, hiding the contents away safely once more. He was still smiling that smile she rarely saw, although she missed it behind the fresh tears that started to roll down her face and onto her half-eaten cookie when he said, simply,“ _Now_  you do.” 


	8. Accessories Make the Outfit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: orgasm denial.

Bill had located a handkerchief for Laura, and then climbed back into bed and slotted himself between her and the bulkhead, pulling her back to lean against his chest, his feet dangling off the edge of the too-narrow rack. Not quite the way he had ever envisioned this moment, perhaps: their post-coital languor interrupted by Laura’s quiet, hitching sobs and sniffles as she nibbled her way through one of his precious cookies, wrapped from neck to feet in his blanket. He had pictured more nudity and fewer tears, but… it worked.   
  
There was a rightness here, to the feeling of this particular woman in his arms, even to her anxiety, the emotions having their way with her just now. And he knew his role, which was to allow her to admit all that, give her a place to go where she could feel it… and then keep his mouth shut about it afterwards, most likely. Bill was fine with that, he could do that. When a pilot goes down and his point man gets crashing drunk and breaks his fist on somebody else’s face in a bar that night, you don’t wake him the next day to talk about how he’d expressed his feelings… his feelings, ultimately, did not matter, because pilots died sometimes and the rest went on, did their duty. That was the way things were. She was like that, like a pilot, steering them all through space with frantic accuracy, and one by one her companions were picked off around her and she’d never once gotten to tie one on and sock Saul Tigh in the nose and then be the one to take him to the clinic the next day, nurse that blistering hangover and those bruised knuckles in all the bright lights while the doc bandaged his ugly schnoz, then drive him straight to the officer’s club for a little hair of the dog and a completely wordless conversation about friendship.   
  
Ah, those were the days… but while she was here, she could cry all she wanted, break his nose as badly as she needed to. Even eat his cookies, if that’s what it took for her to leave feeling like she’d accomplished something, ventedmething she needed to. And if she seemed to be hanging back, keeping something in reserve, damned if he wouldn’t make her get to the point of letting it go. Although he hoped it wouldn’t always result in tears like these, of course. Surely this degree of release had to do with the long wait she’d had to get there. What she needed was… Bill smiled to himself. What she needed, obviously, was to be gettin’ it regular.  
  
He wondered if she’d really come back after tonight, or if her doubts would resurface once she’d had a chance to think again, and they’d be back where they started, or worse… formal. Unpleasant. Cold. It was an unbearable proposition. He rested his chin on top of her head, hearing that her tears had subsided to an occasional gulp and sniff.   
  
“It’s a shame,” he said, hoping it wasn’t too soon for levity, “but now that you know about the cookies, I can’t let you leave the cabin alive. You understand, I’m sure.”  
  
“I suspected as much,” Laura said with a watery smile. “Are you going to kill me right away, or just chain me to the bedpost?”  
  
“Which do you think?”  
  
“Kill me. That way you don’t have to feed your hostage, and you keep all the home cookies for yourself.”  
  
Bill looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of it that way… but I think I’ll chain you to the bed anyway. At least for awhile. Good decoration. You’ll have to lose the blanket, though.”  
  
“I’m comfortable in the blanket.” She sat up, giving a final sniff and a determined little sigh, folding the appallingly drenched hankie over and over into a tiny, compact square of horrifying dampness.   
  
“Yeah… a little too comfortable, I think. Take it off,” he said firmly, in a voice that clearly expected compliance. He was already on the move, sliding off the rack and opening one of the compartments beneath it, sliding open an interior drawer and rummaging inside. “Off, Laura,” he repeated without looking up, not needing to look to know she hadn’t followed his order the first time.   
  
The blanket slid off the bed and covered his hands with a slithering ‘flump,’ and without moving anything else Bill lifted his eyes in a glare with pure steel behind it. Laura had shifted her legs, propped her elbows on the edge of the bunk, and bent down to rest her chin on one hand. As Bill looked up, she reached out deliberately and dropped the disgusting wad of hankie squarely in the middle of the blanket that was still piled over his hands and lap, then drew her arm back and settled her chin on both hands, clearly curious to see what would happen next.   
  
Foolish of her, really, to drop her guard that way. And with her hands so conveniently situated right in front of her, too… from one heartbeat to the next, Bill had swept the blanket to the side and, under cover of that distraction, trapped her slender wrists in a snug figure-eight of fabric, something black and stretchy and soft, with just enough give that her circulation wasn’t cut off…  
  
“A… sock? This is… Bill, you can’t just tie me up with a sock, that’s ridiculous. I don’t care if it is a dress sock. It won’t even hold me… hey…” As Laura was busy discovering that the binding around her wrists was, on the contrary, holding quite well, resisting her efforts to either twist her hands free or reach the knots with her fingers, Bill was busy at the head of the bed, silently slipping his hand down between the mattress and the side of the rack and pulling the bottom sheet back just enough to reveal the heavy elastic rope handle that he knew was there, just as it was on almost all mattresses. One on each end, two on each side, making it easier to carry or to flip… not that he ever did flip his mattress. Laura had just started to reach for the knot with her teeth, still making disparaging remarks, when he yanked her down unceremoniously by the sock that secured her hands, and slipped a well-worn black leather belt between her wrists. With a few more efficient moves, he succeeded in securing the belt to the mattress handle, tugging the buckle down and well under the mattress before letting the sheet snap back into place, to reduce the possibility of escape still further.   
  
Laura was slightly stunned to find herself face down, hands tethered just out of reach of her teeth, on the Admiral’s bunk. The whole operation had taken Bill just under a minute, by her estimation, and she had to admire his ingenuity, even as she felt a growing concern about just how far he seemed willing to take all this. Farther than she’d anticipated, certainly.   
  
Bill calmly folded the blanket and placed it on the floor, neatly closed up the compartment from whence he’d retrieved his impromptu restraints - civilian clothes, seldom used, but everything had a use these days and he was so glad now he had decided to hang onto them - and then seated himself on the edge of the bunk, surveying his handiwork. Laura was still frowning in disbelief and struggling to pull herself up to the head of the bed, to work her teeth against the knot or her hands close enough to unbuckle the belt; one firm tug on both her legs demolished her headway, slid her back down to lie flat on her belly, and she turned a somewhat annoyed face up to Bill as best she could from her awkward position.   
  
“Bill, this can’t be a good idea, I mean what if-“  
  
Smack! His hand knew the sweet spots now, and found one almost as if by instinct. Laura yelped and jumped, not expecting it, and the look of astonishment on her face was oddly arousing to Bill. He took a minute to survey his work, a handprint of pink rising quickly on the pale background where all the others had already faded…   
  
“By the way,” he said casually, “the slave girl chained to the admiral’s bedpost is supposed to be calling him ‘sir.’ Did you think I actually needed a bedpost or chains for this, Laura?” Without waiting for an answer, he raised his hand and then laid into her backside until he was satisfied with the veritable symphony of squeaks, curses and wordless moans issuing from her, and then paused and leaned over her gently writhing form. “So… what was that again?”  
  
“Sir!” she said quickly, and then hissed as he scratched lightly across her heated skin.   
  
“Does it matter if you think this a good idea?”  
  
“N-no sir…”   
  
Seeming unimpressed with her level of conviction, Bill plied his hand rapidly and repeatedly again, this time paying special attention to the creases at the lower curves of her buttocks, until Laura was bucking against the mattress and crying out more and more loudly as his swats went on. When he stopped this time her breathing was ragged, and her hips strained downward, legs moving restlessly against the sheets, even after his hand had stilled.   
  
“Please,” she whispered, in response to nothing in particular, to everything.   
  
Curious, not really quite believing it without proof, Bill slid his hand between her legs and felt immediately how wet she was, her sex heated and slick with a need his cock was already more than primed to answer… but not just yet, he thought, trying to ignore the temptation that her whimper and the further parting of her legs presented. First, there were things to discuss…  
  
“While I have you here,” he said softly, leaning in over her and carefully nipping along her shoulders…such fair skin, so easily scored by a careless tooth, “I want to make sure you understand that this is not going to be a one-time thing. You will be back in this cabin, in this bunk or on the couch or anywhere else I put you, as often as we can arrange it. As often as I can arrange it. You are mine. You got that?”  
  
“I… yes, sir…”   
  
Her hair slipped off her shoulder at his gentle push, revealing more of her shoulder, the finely drawn muscles pulling gently in an almost automatic, but still vain, attempt to escape. Shushing her, soothing her until she relaxed again, Bill pondered his options.   
  
“I don’t know that you’re really going to get it without… more forceful arguments. However, as we’re somewhat limited at the moment…” He pulled his hand free and smacked her butt again once, a little too sharply for mere fondness, relishing the little sobbing gasp Laura gave for what it was: one more indication that her mind was most definitely not on work at the moment. The temptation to keep going, test her limits and she just how much she could take, just how much they were really talking about, there - he knew, somehow, that she could not only tolerate but would welcome just about anything he’d actually be willing to do - was close to overcoming his common sense about not tipping Cottle off. Not smart, Bill, this is not the time… “Mmm. Next time.  
  
“But for now… second thing. Knowing what I now know about you, Laura, I know there is no frakking way you left Caprica for an overnight trip without bringing along a vibrator.” He ignored her automatic protest, continuing as if she hadn’t tried to interject. “You told me once you were pissed off at Adar when you left… you’d have packed something, just out of a sense of spite. Even if it was just a back massager, something that looked innocent. Do you still have it?”  
  
“I… it… ran out of batteries, sir. And I couldn’t keep asking Tory to get more, she got wise the second time and gave me a funny look when I told her they were for the flashlight, I could tell she knew. Billy had never figured it out… and the president can’t just go out and get her own damn batteries, you know? And now they’re getting almost impossible to find. It’s just… are you laughing at me?”   
  
He was indeed, so hard that tears were threatening to spill from his eyes onto her back; shaking, silent throes of laughter that finally burst out into a guffaw, a very unattractive one Laura thought as he collapsed onto her back helplessly.   
  
“So… you do still have it?” he choked out finally, wiping his eyes and attempting to catch his breath.   
  
“Yes. Sir.” Laura said, grumpy at the whole situation.   
  
“Well,” Bill responded, still grinning so broadly she could hear it, “the Admiral has many flashlights, Laura. And access to a lot of supply lockers. I can get all the batteries I want, any time I want, and nobody will bat an eye. So I guess the real question is…” He slid down until his lips were pressed directly to her ear, seeming to speak to every single nerve ending on that side of her body. “… just how badly do you want your underwear back?”  
  
“Oh…” the tingle of his lips along her neck was too distracting, she couldn’t think through all the stimulation. “I don’t… know what…huh?”  
  
Bill chuckled again, the vibration just behind her ear forcing her toes into a deep curl. “Next time you come here, you bring your toy… and I put batteries in it. And then you show me how you like to use it. And if I’m sufficiently… entertained… you get your panties back when you leave. I keep the vibrator, of course.” He punctuated his offer with a firmer bite on her neck, suckling and laving the skin and enjoying the squirming fit it seemed to trigger.  
  
“Um… that’s… I… All right, sir. I’ll… bring…. mmm…”  
  
“See that you do,” he said once he’d released her neck, sternness warring with delight in his voice at the prospect. “It’ll be even more fun if you’ve spent that whole time thinking about it, but keeping your hands off yourself,” he pointed out, not above taking advantage of her susceptible state to influence her decision… although, had she agreed to it at that moment, he never would have held her to it. “Just something to think about.”  
  
“Mmm…”  
  
“Mmm. Yeah. This just needs… more.” He scooted off the bunk and opened up the compartment beneath it again, rummaging around some more and evidently coming up with a variety of things; Laura tried to lift up enough to see, but he was keeping his finds well out of her limited line of view. “Wish I had two more, but… these shoelaces look pretty strong… hey, I forgot I had this tie!”  
  
At last, after another few minutes of muttering to himself and doing things Laura couldn’t see… “the fox goes through the hole, and… is it over or under the mountain? Damn, it’s a long time since I’ve done one of these…” Bill finally returned to the rack and made some more quick adjustments to the foot-end sides of the mattress, where the additional handles made it relatively easy to secure two additional makeshift tethers. Laura only saw the results of his handiwork fleetingly, however, as he loosened the restraint on her hands just long enough to roll her over to her back. She had just breathed a sigh of relief at the change of position when she realized Bill was sitting on one of her legs while tying the other firmly to the bed with another sock, attached to a shoelace tether. She gave a few futile kicks, but couldn’t free either leg; he outweighed her by far too much, and had a grip like a steel clamp when he wanted to.   
  
“Pulling will only tighten these,” he said, almost kindly, patting the second ankle as he secured it firmly. “So stay where I put you.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, with a dawning wave of horror mixed with admiration and lust. The man had just completely restrained her to his bed - as threatened - using nothing more than a few accessories. Gods, what if somebody had an emergency and he had to let them into the cabin? And sweet Lords of Kobol, what would he ever do if he had access to real equipment? And then the realization dawned that he had access not just to batteries but an entire brig’s worth of shackles, and Laura had to bite back a moan.   
  
She had closed her eyes, but blinked them open again uncomfortably when she felt the mattress dip down near her head, and heard a click; Bill had turned on his reading lamp, and angled it to illuminate her more fully. When he positioned himself at the foot of the bed once more, just past her slightly bent knees and outstretched feet, he tapped her inner thighs with his hand lightly.   
  
“Wider.”   
  
But he wasn’t looking between her legs; he was watching her face, watching how his order was affecting her. Laura tried to brazen it out, but couldn’t, and flushed as she parted her legs still further, feeling once again horribly exposed and embarrassingly aroused by it. She was clenching her jaw and glaring at him, she knew, but couldn’t help it, and his smirk just made it worse; he knew what it was doing to her, knew before he stretched a hand out to swipe at the moisture that was once again gathering between her legs… and the part of her that hated him for using that knowledge was rapidly being wrestled into submission by the part of her that needed desperately to be used in just this way.   
  
“Remember the rules, Laura,” he said in a warning tone, flashing a smile that could have melted her to the floor had he chosen to use it at any time in the past three years. And then he lowered his head… and started to drive her slowly insane. First with teasing, not quite touching, only the softest breaths heating her center while fingers traced along the outer lips of her pussy, never going where she needed them to be. Then with teasing of a different sort, a finger slipped inside her without warning, lips fastening on to her clit and suckling swiftly, tongue flicking back and forth across the throbbing nerves… and then stopping abruptly, meandering away with kisses and bites to explore other territory. Again and again, he drove her to the brink of pleasure, only to pull up short when he sensed she was starting to warm up.   
  
At one point Bill tracked a wet, lazy finger downward from her snatch, pressing inquisitively against the snugly furled bud he had clearly been seeking, and latched on to her clitoris again just as he pushed his fingertip past the tight ring of muscles. Laura whimpered and trembled, trying not to buck against the intrusion, knowing that trying to push him out now would perversely only let him drive further in…  
  
“You’ve done it like this before.” It wasn’t a question.   
  
“Yes, sir, I have,” she admitted. “From time to time.”   
  
“Do you like it?”  
  
She couldn’t recall ever having been asked so directly before… unless it was rhetorically, in the middle of the act itself, the familiar grunt in the ear… ”Like that, baby? Do you like that, huh?” Always when it was far too late in the process to demur with any grace, frankly. “I… only sometimes, sir.”  
  
Bill looked up at her with interest. “Hmmm. Somebody was doing it wrong, then.” Not expecting an answer he returned to his work of waking up each and every nerve ending in her body, always hinting at but never delivering climax, until Laura was pleading, trembling from head to toe, incoherent with need…   
  
“No,” he said calmly, when she begged to come for what seemed to her like the hundredth time, but was actually only the fourth or fifth. “I’m doing this for my own enjoyment. You already came, earlier. Maybe next time, you’ll wait until you have permission…”   
  
Her cry of frustration was probably audible out in the corridor, but Bill found he no longer cared. His second erection of the evening was, to his surprise, becoming literally too hard to ignore. Choices, choices… a world of possibilities lay before him. But Bill knew he was a traditionalist at heart. Climbing up Laura’s body just long enough to free one of her hands, he retreated and kneeled between her knees again, taking himself in one hand and tugging her fingers down towards her pussy with the other.   
  
“Play with yourself,” he ordered crisply, the gravel in his tone roughing up Laura’s already oversensitized nerves. “Don’t… don’t come. If you touch your clit, I’m tying your hand back up.” He released her and started stroking himself firmly, quickly, cupping his balls in his free hand and squeezing them lightly, tugging…   
  
Laura was struggling, her fingers playing through her sopping folds, her entire being filled with only the screaming need to do exactly what he’d told her not to… she was too keyed up, she was actually crying as she writhed and moaned and fought with herself. She was a mess, tears streaking down her face, her makeup long since worn off, blotches of red across her neck and breasts from his repeated onslaughts with tongue and teeth and a day-old beard… and Bill knew he had never seen anything so utterly beautiful or arousing in his life as Laura, fallen to pieces beneath him.   
  
His only remaining decision, and it was about to become critical, was where he wanted to finish this. Not on her face… the image of her going down on him was going to be hard enough to cope with, out there in the real world, but Bill knew he’d never be able to compensate for the vision of Laura with his spunk decorating her face and hair. Breasts? Breasts were good… but he didn’t want the moment spoiled for either of them by any reminders of her illness. In the last remaining second of choice, Bill grabbed Laura’s knee and aimed towards her hand, moaning as he watched her fingers parting her nether lips wider, an inadvertent target… and then he was coming, shooting his hot, viscous essence over her body in a glorious mess, marking her cunt, her belly, her hand and thighs with ropy streaks of white.   
  
The picture that would stay with him, however, was not the one he intended, the “money shot” he’d set up for himself; rather, he would recall the expression on Laura’s face, her eyes flying open as the hot fluid hit her pussy and she looked down to realize what he’d done… her fingers, still working for a moment and then drawn away in despair, knowing he was serious about not letting her come again that night. She’d almost thrown her sperm-coated hand across her forehead, across her eyes, only catching herself at the last minute and, defeated, letting it flop back down on her belly after a weak effort to shake the stuff off.   
  
By the time he returned to the rack with a damp cloth to mop her clean, Laura was almost half-asleep; she looked up with a drowsy, sheepish smile as Bill stroked gently, thoroughly... she let out a shuddering breath when he made a few passes with the cloth over her still-unsated sex, but relaxed back against the mattress when he moved on. Once he was finished, he freed her from the restraints one at a time, checking wrists and ankles for any signs of chafing, kissing the tender flesh of each limb with infinite care before setting it down and moving to the next.   
  
When he had dispensed with the washcloth, he returned to the bunk, shaking the blanket from its folds and flicking it high, letting it fall to cover both of them as he climbed alongside her, nudging her gently until she rolled to her side so he could spoon along her back. After a moment he grumbled and moved again, reaching to turn off the reading light before snuggling back down against her. And then there were kisses in her hair, his strong arm around her for her to cling to, his deep, even breaths along her spine as he pulled her closer to his chest.   
  
“You did so well,” he whispered, feeling her match her breathing to his. “Incredible, Laura…”  
  
“Shhh… go to sleep, Bill,” Laura said softly, smiling, tucking his arm more firmly around her. “You did good, too, you know.”  
  
And then she was asleep, not quite snoring. Bill lowered his head slowly to the pillow, expecting to lie awake a good long time pondering the events of the evening…


	9. After the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a time slip... This chapter takes place somewhere in and around the first three eps of season 4, and was written as a consolation after events on the show left this series too AU for me to continue it. It's as close to closure as I could bear to get.

Just until she found another place to stay. Just until a more suitable arrangement could be made. That was the deal, that was the excuse. And Bill was officially sleeping elsewhere for the nonce, to keep appearances up. But the Old Man rarely slept, it was well known, and if he kept odd hours nobody dared comment. His office, after all, was in his quarters. His belongings remained there. He still showered and dressed there. So naturally he spent all his spare time there. Who would ever suspect anything ulterior in his motive for doing so? Who would divulge his true purpose? Certainly not the woman he left each night, sore and sated, in the rack he had already come to think of as "theirs."   
  
Several times during the days following Kara Thrace's miraculous return, Laura strongly considered flinging Bill's stuff out into the corridor and locking him out for good. She liked his quarters, they were infinitely more comfortable than Colonial One, but their primary occupant was dancing a hornpipe on her last nerve. The evening he got drunk and mean, accusing her of being selfish, of fearing that her death would be meaningless, she watched him walk towards the exit for the night and was actually considering pushing him out the hatch and locking it behind him when he turned around, swaying slightly, for some purpose she was never to know. His eyes fell to her hand, which still held a few fine strands of hair. The larger swatch of auburn lay on the desk nearby, in plain view had he cared to look earlier.   
  
Laura glanced up long enough to follow his gaze, then lowered her eyes again to the report in front of her. Daring him to say anything. Holding her breath, because if he did say something, there was always the chance it would somehow be the right thing, the very thing to make this all right. He could fool you that way, Bill could.   
  
He didn't speak, though. Instead he stopped, caught by the reality of those silky threads, each one a piece of Laura's life now lost forever. And he walked slowly back to the desk and lowered his hand to pick up the hair she wasn't holding, and placed the fingers of his other hand gently against the back of her fingers. She saw the contrast in him played out - the fingers grasping the hair were so tightly gripped she could see each bone of his knuckles. But the hand covering hers now, pulling her up and out of her chair and into an embrace, was so light against her skin she could barely feel it. He could have been handling porcelain. Laura didn't like it. She didn't want him to handle her that way. It seemed too final, for him to view her as fragile that way. She didn't want to meet Bill's eyes now, for fear of what she would see.   
  
He insisted, though. Still without words, but dropping the hair finally and raising his hand to lift her chin so she had no choice but to look at him or close her eyes. Laura was too proud to close her eyes. She knew she had nothing to hide from him, and didn't want him to read her reticence that way. As being about him. It was about her, her own fear, and that fear was confirmed when she saw his expression. Realization, pity, horror, grief. An abyss of emotions she was in no position to help him process. Exactly what she had wanted to avoid.   
  
"Be right back," he said, his voice catching, and she watched him walk to the hatch again. This time he opened it, spoke briefly with the Marines on duty, then closed the portal again and locked it. When he came back to her, she could recognize the feelings behind his impassive mask - but at least the mask was back in place. He met her eyes as if the past few moments - the past hour - had never happened.   
  
"I told them I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight. Said the President wasn't feeling well, needed somebody with her just in case. And you know I think they actually bought that."  
  
She smiled, the faintest hint of a smile, with the quietest hint of a hum. "And?"  
  
"Figured out the problem. You're spending too much time on those reports, and not nearly enough time naked in my bunk."  
  
Cocking her head to one side, she considered this possibility, wondering vaguely how much he'd really had to drink. "And?"  
  
"Makes you a rotten sex slave, but we knew that. Probably why I'm in such a bad mood." But then he looked at her, mask slipping a little, revealing the desperation behind his ploy for such a brief moment Laura thought she could have almost imagined it. Except that she didn't need to see it to know it was there. And she knew she could wait all night and never hear anything closer to an apology than this. It was fair enough; she didn't want to apologize, either, not in so many words. Not about that, anyway.  
  
"Sorry to have neglected you, sir."   
  
"Sorry just isn't good enough, Laura." He was working quickly, and had removed her shirt and had her halfway out of her skirt by this time. The bra followed shortly thereafter. Bill paused at the underwear, running his fingers along the lace trim at the waistband, frowning when Laura flinched with an automatic giggle as he trailed over a ticklish spot. "What am I gonna do with you?"  
  
"Mmm. Anything you like, sir," she purred, tilting her head back. This was better, this was right. She felt the cares of the day slipping away with every word from Bill's mouth, every touch of his talented fingers.   
  
"You got that right." He trailed his hands back up over her ribs, eliciting more giggles, then pulling a moan from her when he cupped her breasts. One quick swipe of his tongue over one nipple, then the other, and the cool air in the room completed the job of teasing the soft nubs into tight knots of anticipation while Bill pushed her panties down to her ankles in a long, slow sweep that allowed him plenty of time for fondling her legs as he went.   
  
Laura loved this part, loved the deliciously wicked freedom of being completely nude while Bill was still in full uniform. Her flickers of concern about her appearance, early on, had quickly vanished under the steady influence of Bill's all too appreciative gaze and unabashedly lecherous words of admiration. He had tried once, the week before, to convince her to go without underwear for the day. She had refused, knowing she would never be able to work while being reminded so patently of this sensation. She was still trying valiantly to keep a sturdy wall between what went on at work, and whatever it was they were doing during their precious few hours together in private. Even so, she had gone throughout her day in a near-constant state of mild arousal, just from the idea of the thing.   
  
Bill took Laura's hands and placed them firmly on the desk behind her, his silent admonition to stay put. She watched as he circled the cabin, turning lights off, checking the hatch one last time, tidying the glasses and straightening up his desk. Whenever he passed her, he paused just long enough to fondle a breast or stroke a hip. At last, minor chores completed, he strode to his bunk and pulled something from a cabinet next to the alcove. With the dimmed lights and from her current angle, Laura couldn't see what it was. But the next sound she heard was all the identifying information she needed.   
  
"I finally found the right size batteries," Bill said, fiddling with the intensity control until he found a buzz he seemed to like. "So I believe it's time for you to try earning those underwear back."  
  
"Oh my gods, you were serious about that?" Laura burst out, laughing nervously. She'd brought the vibrator to him the day after he asked for it, but she had nearly forgotten the thing in all the recent excitement.   
  
Bill smirked. "Get over to the couch. Now."  
  
She had been expecting the bunk. The idea of the couch threw her, and she could feel her nervous tension rising as she walked across the cabin and contemplated the broad expanse of sleek brown leather. The only illumination was the light over the picture, and she turned toward Bill as if to question whether he really intended her to sit there. It looked uncomfortably like a stage.   
  
"Front and center," he confirmed. He snagged a chair from the table and brought it to the side of the trunk-style coffee table opposite the middle of the couch. Laura sat uneasily on the couch where he'd indicated, and Bill sagged comfortably into the chair, lifting his feet to the battered wood of the trunk with a contented sigh. He held the vibrator out to Laura, who had to stand and lean over the table to take it. Bill leered at her breasts shamelessly as she did so, even pulling the toy a bit further out of her reach so he could ogle her longer.   
  
When she finally returned to her seat, personal massager in hand, Laura automatically sat down in the way she usually did, knees primly together, legs crossed neatly at the ankles. Bill snickered and crossed his arms over his chest, getting comfortable. He pushed the heavy trunk table closer to the couch with both feet.   
  
"Lean back against the cushion and get your feet up on the table. No, wider." Laura felt herself blushing scarlet as she positioned herself, propping her feet up and working them further apart. "Wider. This show is for me, I want to see everything."   
  
She edged her feet toward the corners of the table, burning with embarrassment and lust as Bill nodded his approval.   
  
"You gonna show me what you got?" he asked, tapping his fingers against his bicep in mock irritation.   
  
"Yes, sir," Laura whispered, finding the familiar control and twisting it to a medium setting. The device really was ostensibly a massager, a thick utilitarian wand with a heavy, rounded head. She hadn't brought along the specialized attachment she sometimes used, the extra piece that made it into something more than an innocent muscle relaxer. She had, in fact, used it as a back massager from time to time. More recently than she had used it for this evening's purpose, actually. But it wasn't as though she had forgotten what to do with it. It only did one thing, after all: it vibrated. The rest was really up to her. She knew what to do with it - she had just never done it in front of anybody else before.  
  
Laura started as innocuously as she could, bringing the buzzing tip down the crest of one breast to tease at a nipple. Remembering - how could she forget? - that Bill was watching, she fondled her other breast with her free hand, assuming he would enjoy that. His face was in shadows, but she could just make it out. Impassive, still, just watching. Waiting to be impressed. She tweaked her nipple, hard, letting out a tiny gasp as the twinge of pain translated itself down her body to a flash of pleasure between her legs.   
  
Steeling her courage, Laura slid that same hand down her torso, arching her back into her own caress. When she reached the top of her mound, she let her fingers dally in the thatch of auburn curls there while she teased first one nipple then the other with the vibe. Her clit was nearly buzzing already, flushed and full with eager longing, but she knew that a slow approach would be more likely to earn the Admiral's appreciation, and thus the return of her panties. Resisting the temptation to bring the vibe down right away and ease that ache, she skimmed a finger over the throbbing knot of flesh instead, groaning at the wave of need that followed.   
  
She let her hand continue down, running her fingers through her folds. She was sopping wet, she discovered, and a drop of cream was actually threatening to drip down between her cheeks to sully the couch. Laura decided to ignore it, and let Bill worry about his couch later. She hadn't been this wet, this aroused, in.... well, ever, actually. She could feel Bill's gaze like a touch, and the knowledge that he was watching her gave the pleasure an edge Laura had never experienced. Then she corrected herself. Not the knowledge that he was watching. The knowledge that watching her was turning him on. Because she could hear him shifting in his seat now, re-crossing his arms, even making little involuntary grunts of approval.   
  
Encouraged, Laura finally moved the vibrator again, but only to the still-tame zone of her inner thighs. She ran the device's head along the long muscles and tendons there, surprised to find that even so far away from where she wanted it most, the vibration was dangerously stimulating. She couldn't come without permission, and she had no idea whether Bill was in a generous mood at the moment.   
  
She decided to turn things up another notch, to test his stoicism. Letting the massager rest for a moment against one leg, she focused on the other hand and dipped one finger inside her drenched pussy. Drawing it nearly all the way out and then plunging it in again, she raised her hips in time with the movement and was rewarded with a muffled groan from Bill's side of the table. When she added a second finger, she heard a thump; his feet had slipped off the table, and he had pulled them towards his chair in a stance wide enough to accommodate his growing erection.   
  
Smelling success near at hand, Laura pumped her fingers and hips a few more times, then pulled out and spread her nether lips as wide as she could, moaning shamelessly. Unable to resist, she teased at the opening with the vibe, pressing in a slow rhythm that brought her dangerously close to the point of no return. Her clit was aching now, actually hurting with need, and she knew that a single touch of the vibe on that hot, throbbing bundle of nerves would be enough to send her over the edge. Without meaning to, she whimpered aloud, and heard Bill chuckle wickedly in response.   
  
"You want to come, don't you?"  
  
"Yesss," she hissed, flexing her hips unconsciously into the delicious buzzing pressure.   
  
"Careful what you wish for," he said mildly, and stood up, walking around the trunk and lifting her leg to let himself past as casually as though she were a piece of furniture. When he had replaced her limb and seated himself between her feet, leaning forward with a smile that was positively evil, he spoke again. "Ask nicely, and I'll think about it."  
  
"Frak," she muttered, and then whined in misery when Adama pressed up on the vibe, nudging it closer to her clit. "Please," she amended immediately. "Please, can I come? Please? Sir? Oh, gods..." She had to stop, grit her teeth, exhale in a measured pant to keep herself from exploding.   
  
"Can you? Laura, you were a teacher. Is that how we ask?" Bill said disapprovingly. He examined the controls on the device and then turned it up a few notches, forcing the buzz to a higher pitch and Laura's arousal to a point somewhere between agony and bliss.  
  
"Oh, for - May I? Please may I come, please? Bill, please, I can't -"  
  
"Come for me, Laura. Let me see you," he demanded, with no room for argument. Not that Laura was interested in arguing. She was too busy keening her pleasure, panting Bill's name in a litany of relief, as she shuddered through wave after wave of concentrated ecstasy under the unrelenting vibration of the machine Bill now pressed firmly against her clit. He had thrust two thick fingers inside her as well, and found her most sensitive spot with uncanny accuracy.   
  
At last Laura was writhing, gasping, trying to come down. She pushed ineffectually at Bill's hands, but he just grinned his evil grin once more.   
  
"I warned you to be careful what you wished for," he reminded her, and stroked the vibe in tiny circles against her already over-sensitized clit, tugging at her swollen channel with his fingers still hooked inside her. Laura arched into the orgasm that zipped through her, screaming at the shock of pleasure-pain.   
  
By the time the spasm began to ease she was crying, babbling, pleading with Bill to stop. He pulled his hand from her body but didn't move the toy.   
  
"You know the magic word. If you want me to stop, just say it." He caught one of her hands in his and slapped it onto the vibe, covering it with his own so she couldn't let go. He turned the dial up to the highest setting before snagging her other hand to keep her from interfering as he forced her into a third climax; with their joined hands he pressed her back into the couch, holding her firmly in place as she tried to squirm away. When the peak hit, she couldn't even gather the breath to cry out, just gasped wordlessly for air, for release, for salvation, anything.   
  
The next thing she was aware of was the warm, soothing sensation of Bill's hand, cupped over her still-tingling pussy protectively. With his other hand he stroked a few stray strands of sweat-dampened hair from her forehead and then ran his fingers lovingly down her cheek, waiting for her eyes to open which they finally did with a flutter.  
  
He looked unbearably smug. Laura couldn't decide whether she wanted to punch him or fall at his feet and kiss his boots. She didn't have the energy for either, however, so the point was really moot.   
  
"There you are."  
  
"Mmm."  
  
"Sort of."  
  
"Mmm-hmm."  
  
"Bed now."   
  
He scooped her up and carried her effortlessly to the bunk, where he let her lounge in her postorgasmic stupor while took his jacket off.   
  
"Did I earn my underwear back?" Laura finally mustered the strength to ask plaintively.   
  
"That, and I may go buy you another dozen pairs on the black market," he confirmed. "As a bonus. Scoot over."   
  
"I can't move my legs," she said, almost honestly. Bill's smugness intensified.   
  
"Lightweight."  
  
She didn't answer. He was moving her legs for her, splaying them out and climbing between them once she was arranged to his satisfaction. She felt limp, spent, and would have sworn on the scrolls of Pythia that not a flicker of sexual energy was left in her body. But Bill's hands, parting and stroking her thighs, sent a shiver of arousal through her core, and she moaned in anguished disbelief. She didn't have long to contemplate the sensation, however. With one of his lightning changes of plan, Bill shifted position and rolled Laura over, tugging her back a little from the bulkhead once she was on her stomach and pulling her hips away from the mattress so she wasn't laying quite flat.  
  
Then again, she thought, perhaps the change wasn't so spur-of-the-moment after all. The first thwack on her butt came without warning, and as she yelped in surprise she realized Bill wasn't using his hand this time. Lifting her head and craning her neck over her shoulder, she saw he was holding a hairbrush. Her hairbrush. She let her face fall forward again and took the next few strokes silently, processing the pain, settling into it. Bill was changing up his tempo, the strength of the blows, making it hard for her to zone out. But each strike sent an echo to the hot, damp craving that was blossoming again between her legs.   
  
"What is this for?" She finally managed during a brief pause. "Ow! I thought I'd been good."  
  
"You were wonderful. I just felt like it. Gods, your ass is gorgeous."  
  
She arched into his touch, sudden and unexpected against her flushed skin. He squeezed both globes, weighing the flesh in his hands. He trailed his thumbs down from her tailbone, spreading her cheeks, giving Laura a hint of his ultimate goal for the evening. She wasn't wrong. The next thing she felt was a trickle of cold fluid down her backside, and then a probing finger spreading the stuff around, tickling at the sensitive flesh, and finally dipping inside the tight ring of muscle. With his other hand, he massaged the surrounding muscles, but Laura was still tightening uneasily against the intrusion. It had been a long time...  
  
A series of open-palmed smacks startled her, distracting her from her concern.   
  
"Relax," he ordered, and she couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the request. The laughter caused her abdominal muscles to press down, easing the tension and allowing Bill to work his finger further in. He added another dollop of lubricant, prompting a snort from Laura.   
  
"Think you're using enough lube, sir?"  
  
"Nope. You can never have enough lube. And be quiet, I'm working here."   
  
"Yeah, I noticed."  
  
Ignoring her sassy retort, Bill started pumping his finger and circling it with each downstroke, gently stretching the taut flesh of her opening until he was able to slide a second finger in. Laura hummed and arched her back, earning another few swats. These were aimed at the sensitive crease between her buttock and thigh, and did more to arouse than to punish.   
  
"Be still. Or I go in right now."  
  
She froze, undoing some of his work as her muscles tightened automatically at that prospect.   
  
"Settle down," Bill growled, slipping his hand beneath her to tap firmly against her clit. The slap set the still-sore flesh zinging with remembered pleasure, and Laura whimpered despite her efforts not to. Her noise was reprimanded with a second, sharper slap. Bill used it as a diversionary tactic, meant to shift Laura's attention away from the third finger now joining the rear assault. He was a decent strategist; the conflicting sensations made Laura's muscles shudder with her effort not to move, but then she relaxed again under the long soothing strokes he then applied along her spine.   
  
More lube, and then Bill's hand pressing up against her pelvis, his brusque, "Up" directing her to lift her hips still further, until she was braced on her knees with her shoulders still pinned to the mattress. Open, available, drenched with the combined fluids of her own manufacture and Bill's supplement, she felt dreamy and unable to offer even token resistance. Whatever he chose to do next was what she wanted with every fiber of her lust-soaked being.   
  
At the unexpected bonus of feeling Bill's cock pressed firmly against her cunt, then sliding all the way home in one gloriously lubricated sweep, Laura groaned and willed her legs wider. The scrape of wool against her thighs when Bill struck the depth of her let her know he hadn't bothered to undress the rest of the way. She clenched around him, feeling a shuddering need flicker in her tortured clit. When he pumped his fingers a few times, the feeling intensified. His hand moved but, with iron control, he only slid his cock in and out of her a few times. Lubricating it, she realized belatedly as he pulled out completely. She heard and felt him shift position before she felt his fingers leave her. Going from deliciously full to completely empty was almost unbearable, and her breathing grew rapid and shallow with the effort not to move.  
  
"Please..." she whispered. Bill stroked her hip affectionately and shushed her. When she felt the firm, rounded tip of his cock against the slick but still-tight rosette of her ass, she welcomed it and was too insensible to be surprised at herself.   
  
He took his time, testing himself and her, adding still more lube and teasing in and out of her entrance, circling the opening with a tickling finger, slipping his hand around her hip to brush lightly against her clit and pussy. By the time he finally popped his thick head past the resistant ring of muscle and paused, Laura barely needed time to adjust. She sighed deeply and blissfully into the blanket beneath her as he worked his way deeper more confidently now, petting her hips and pussy, calling her a good girl.   
  
After a few measured strokes, however, Bill hitched her hips higher still and started speeding up, going deeper and harder until he was slamming his full length into her with each thrust. Laura had no choice but to shift her arms and brace herself as she strove to meet this new onslaught without being driven back down to the mattress. She couldn't have helped but move, in any case, in response to the amazing waves of sensation coursing through her with each movement of Bill's hot, throbbing shaft. She thought she was coming and tried to stave it off, only to realize the ecstasy was no event but a state of being, a liquid fire that lit her body from neck to knees and flared each time Bill crashed into her depths.   
  
"Coming? Can...?" she gasped, still not sure.   
  
"Oh, gods yeah! Laura...ah..." Bill's permission trailed off into an incoherent moan as he jerked his hips against her more frantically until he fetched up against her in one final, spasming thrust that triggered some release in Laura as well. Her fire flared and raged as he emptied himself inside her, and they cried out together with the little breath they could muster before sagging down to the bed like a pair of empty wine skins. Depleted yet replete, Bill wincing as he pulled away from her, Laura whispering nonsensical endearments and reassurance.   
  
After a few minutes he got up, and a few breaths later Laura heard the splashing noises from the head that indicated he was removing the evidence. She grimaced, thinking about it, and then put it from her mind as he returned to the bunk, rolled her carefully to her back and started cleaning off all her own important regions assiduously with a warm, wet washcloth. As usual, he spent longer at the task than was probably required, but Laura could hardly complain. Partly, she had to admit, because she was not sure she was quite capable of speech yet. She watched through her eyelashes as Bill stationed himself between her legs and bent happily to his work. He had taken his uniform off, she registered dimly, but she was too sleepy and sated for his naked form to stir anything but a final tingling itch under the washcloth, soon soothed away by his deliberate strokes.   
  
She knew she should be thinking about what just happened, should probably in fact be concerned about it. But Bill's gentle touch, his look of utter certainty about the devotion he was demonstrating, was insidiously reassuring. He had done what she had asked of him, taken her so far from her daily world that she forgot it entirely. But as she had feared, the down side of that relief and release was that going back into the world was a sharp, cruel shock to her increasingly fragile system. Even now, ignore it though they might, an unsettling number of loose auburn strands were strewn across the pillow, and Laura felt as though each hair took a piece of her strength with it.   
  
On the other hand, the perverse sense of strength she had just experienced seemed worth any price. Like any addiction, it had become necessary before she realized she was in thrall to it. In thrall to Bill, more than she had ever thought possible.   
  
She spoke without thinking, from some stray thought that ambled from her brain to her lips and was therefore, of course, hugely important.  
  
"You win. I can't come without you anyway, now. So after the fact I give you that one. For free."  
  
It was true. She had tried, and failed, three times now since he had first made his request. The number felt significant to her, and she was all too aware of how powerful numbers could be in psychology. Three attempts and she was done trying. She conceded.   
  
"I'm still keeping the toy."  
  
"Frak. Foiled again," she murmured, grinning as her eyes started to close on their own.   
  
"Are you okay?"   
  
She knew he was asking about more than her physical well-being. Although... she shifted her butt against the mattress uneasily, uncomfortably aware of every nerve ending in that vicinity. Not as sore as she had expected to be, however. "I am fabulous. And very, very sleepy."  
  
Impossibly endearing, Bill leaned over her and kissed the tip of her nose, tugging a blanket over her and tucking the edges in around her.  
  
"I think you've earned a rest."  
  
"What about you?"  
  
"Starving. I'm going to go eat something. Get some sleep."   
  
She was asleep by the time he stood up from the edge of the bunk.


End file.
